Repertory theatre began in London in 1576, when James Burbage and John Brayne opened The Theatre in Shoreditch, and continued with only minor interruptions up to the ban on performance imposed by Parliament in 1642. By 1610, seating for 10,000 spectators was available across the various London playhouses.Footnote 1 The London theatre became a considerable employer and creator of numerous fortunes, as playwrights built considerable public prestige – and, in some cases, notoriety – through print as well as performance. In previous chapters, we have presented some quantitative perspectives on the body of play-texts which survive from this endeavour.
Regular performances in the public playhouses came to an abrupt end in 1642, following the Parliamentary ban. There were only surreptitious public performances during the Civil War and the English Republic, when theatre companies were disbanded and some theatres themselves dismantled.Footnote 2 When the monarchy was restored in 1660, Charles II granted patents to two theatrical companies and performances resumed, dominated at first by surviving plays written before the Civil War. Those who wrote new plays did so conscious of a vastly talented and celebrated previous generation, divided from them by a civil war and a broken theatrical tradition, conscious also that they were writing in sharply different times and for changed tastes.
In 1667, John Dryden lamented the belatedness of his generation's playwrights. Ben Jonson, John Fletcher, and William Shakespeare ‘are honoured and almost adored by us, as they deserve’, but they left their successors in a sad state:
We acknowledge them our fathers in wit, but they have ruined their estates themselves, before they came to their children's hands. There is scarce an humour, a character, or any kind of plot, which they have not blown upon. All comes sullied and wasted to us: and were they to entertain this age, they could not make so plenteous treatments out of such decayed fortunes. This, therefore, will be a good argument to us, either not to write at all, or to attempt some other way.Footnote 3
Dryden returned to the topic often. In a dedicatory verse prefixed to the first edition of William Congreve's The Double Dealer (1694), Dryden claims that, with Congreve's play, Restoration drama's great predecessors – ‘the giant race, before the flood’ – have finally been equalled and excelled. In The Double Dealer, Congreve matches Jonson in ‘judgement’, exceeds Fletcher in ‘wit’, and has as much ‘genius’ as Shakespeare.Footnote 4
The relationship between the new plays of the 1660s and the pre-1642 drama is a topic of much scholarly debate. When the theatres re-opened, a number of plays from the previous era were available to serve as models: the works of Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher, Ben Jonson, Philip Massinger, Thomas Middleton, and James Shirley were represented, and Shakespeare's Othello, 1 Henry the Fourth, and The Merry Wives of Windsor were all performed before the end of 1660.Footnote 5 Noting this, and seeing borrowings and adaptations from older drama in the new plays, critics have emphasised continuity in the English dramatic tradition.Footnote 6
By contrast, other commentators characterise Restoration theatre as a break from earlier dramatic styles, taking a cue from Dryden's avowed sense that he and his fellow playwrights had a distinct advantage over their predecessors in the ‘native language’ of the day, which was now ‘more refined and free’ and with ‘more wit in conversation’ than in the writing of the older poets.Footnote 7 In comedy, for example, Renaissance ‘humour’ and ‘innate genius’ gave way to Restoration ‘wit’ and ‘external form’, as the ‘national’ comedy of the earlier period become more ‘local’, focusing on the ‘fashionable intrigue’ of London ‘society comedy’ and the courtly ‘comedy of manners’.Footnote 8 Scholars also cite Restoration authors who argued that Renaissance drama did not conform to the rules prescribed by the French theatre critics of the day, and thus could be regarded as obsolete.Footnote 9 Others point to changes in the material conditions of the theatre to explain the apparent stylistic division between Renaissance and Restoration drama. Harold Love, for example, argues that a new technology of illusion in the theatre after the Restoration ‘predetermined many aspects of the verbal texts of the plays’: wing-and-shutter scenery was used for the first time, women's roles were now played by women, parts were no longer doubled, and actors were much more static on stage, enhancing a focus on verbal artistry. Allied to this was a strong sense that this was a new era and ‘[e]verything was to be reformed in the light of up-to-date values’.Footnote 10
This chapter compares the style of the first crop of Restoration plays with the earlier tradition. Did the writers of the 1660s take up where the dramatists of the 1630s and earlier 1640s left off? Did they return to some earlier celebrated styles like that of Shakespeare, or did they perhaps depart entirely from the ‘giant race’ and ‘attempt some other way’, as Dryden suggests? We take ten comedies from the 1660s, each by a different author, and eight tragicomedies from the same period, again with eight different authors, and use methods of computational stylistics to map the dialogue styles of these plays against a large set of earlier plays (243 in total). These plays are listed in Appendix A.
Previous scholarship has typically focused on the themes and attitudes of the plays rather than the patterns of their language – on the participation of a 1660s play about Henry the Fifth, for instance, in ‘the Restoration moment’.Footnote 11 Instead, our interest here is in the style of the plays, lying somewhere between form, as in the adoption of heroic couplets, and themes, as in implied support for one side or other of an ideological divide. The analysis we present in this chapter suggests that 1660s comedy and tragicomedy reflect continuity with older English drama rather than a new beginning. When the new plays are mapped onto the old, they take their place comfortably with earlier plays in their respective genres. Comedies of the 1660s in particular are aligned with the plays of the 1630s and early 1640s, and we discuss the characteristics of this evolved Caroline dramatic style. Then, turning to authors, we show that the language patterns of the 1660s comedies bring them closest to Richard Brome's style, whether taking the genre aspect into consideration or disregarding it. The style of the 1660s tragicomedies comes closest to James Shirley, again when comparing tragicomedies alone or dealing with a mixed group. We do not find a ‘doubling back’ in style to earlier periods in pre-1642 drama, therefore, and the plays of the 1660s emerge as natural successors to those of the 1630s and 1640s.
Mapping 1660s Comedies
To compare the styles of the 1660s comedies with patterns in the earlier plays, we perform a Principal Components Analysis (PCA) using the 100 most common function words in the 243 professional-company plays from 1580–1642,Footnote 12 applied to a combined set of the 243 plays and 10 1660s comedies – 253 plays in all. Figure 7.1 shows how the play-texts scored on the first and second principal components.
Figure 7.1 PCA scatterplot of 243 plays from 1580 to 1642 and 10 comedies from the 1660s, using the 100 most common function words.
The data-points for 1660s comedies are marked by crosses, late plays from the 1630–42 period with black disks, and comedies from among the 1580–1642 plays with extra circles. The 1660s comedies form a distinctive group on the first principal component (PC1), all to the higher end of the x-axis, and some among the very highest. PC1 would seem to have a chronology component – the 1630–42 plays are mostly, if not all, to the higher end of this axis – as well as a genre component, since comedies also cluster to the higher end. This configuration is compatible with the chronology analysis presented in Chapter 5, of a marked temporal effect which runs through a good part of the 1580–1642 set but which peters out in the last four half-decades.
The 1660s comedies are not so sharply different that they form an entirely separate cluster. PC1 is not a ‘1660s comedies versus the rest’ factor. Yet, on a component that has a strong genre and chronology aspect, they are clustered towards one end. Along this axis they are more tightly grouped and generally higher scoring than the 1630–42 plays, perhaps partly because they – unlike the 1630–42 group – are all comedies, and there is a genre aspect to PC1. It may also be perhaps because the 1660 comedies are an extension of a ‘drift’ in style which had plateaued in the last part of the 1580–1642 period.
The words with, thy, hath, from, of, the, his, ourtruePlural, their, and thatrelative had the lowest weightings on PC1 – with having the very lowest – and thus are more common in the plays to the lower end of this component in Figure 7.1. The words it, I, have, you, has, is, a, there, am, and would had the highest weightings and are more common in the plays to the upper end of PC1, with it as the highest. This confirms the notion that this component is closely related to the component highlighted in Chapter 5 – with prepositions and with in particular at one end, and I, you, and auxiliary verbs at the other.
Closer inspection of the PCA weightings of the word-variables thus reveals three large sub-sets: prepositions, verbs, and nouns. Figure 7.2 shows the PCA weightings for the 11 prepositions in the set of the 100 most common function words. A group of prepositions clusters to the lower end of PC1: with, on, and of are very heavily weighted in a negative direction; upon, at, and for are to the positive end, it is true, but only with medium to low weightings.
Figure 7.2 Scatterplot of PCA weightings for 11 prepositions in the 100 most common function words across 243 plays from 1580 to 1642 and 10 comedies from the 1660s.
The opposite pattern appears in the PCA weightings of the 19 verbs in the 100 most common function words. As shown in Figure 7.3, most have positive weightings on PC1: while hath is heavily weighted in the negative direction, complementing has in the positive direction, and did and shall are just to the low side of the PC1 axis, the rest of the verbs cluster to the positive end. Has, as already mentioned, would, had, is, have, am, and willverb (as distinguished from the noun form) are among the most heavily weighted variables of all on PC1.
Figure 7.3 Scatterplot of PCA weightings for 19 verbs in the 100 most common function words across 243 plays from 1580 to 1642 and 10 comedies from the 1660s.
Twenty-three pronouns make up the third large sub-set in the 100 most common function words. Figure 7.4 shows the weightings for this group on PC1 and PC2. The older forms thy, thou, and thee are to the lower end on both axes, and the more modern forms you and your are to the higher, matching the pattern for hath and has (Figure 7.3). All the possessives apart from your are to the lower end. Evidently, the chronology factor outweighed the possessive factor in this one case. All the subject and object forms apart from thou, thee, wetruePlural, and ustruePlural are to the higher end. It, you, and I are very heavily weighted to the positive end. Generally, a style oriented to reflection, narrative, and description would favour possessives, and a simplified direct style, focused on action and interaction, would favour subject and object pronouns.
Figure 7.4 Scatterplot of PCA weightings for 23 pronouns and possessives in the 100 most common function words across 243 plays from 1580 to 1642 and 10 comedies from the 1660s.
To explore further the contrast in style which underlies PC1, we sample the kinds of dialogue that attract high and low scores. We divide the plays into 500-word segments, incorporate any residues into the last segment of a play, and use the word counts for these segments to find them a score along PC1 by multiplying each of the proportional counts for the 100 words by the PC1 weightings for the relevant variable. Each of the 9,823 segments in the 253-play set then has a PC1 score, from the highest, which happens to be the seventh segment of Love's Cruelty, to the lowest, the thirteenth segment of David and Bethsabe – which was also the lowest in the projection of the 50-word component which arranged the eight half-decades 1585–1624 in chronological order in Chapter 5.
The seventh segment of Love's Cruelty has Hippolito receive instruction from a fencer, suffer interruption by a page announcing the arrival of Clariana, and then exchange courtship banter with Clariana. All three kinds of discourse bring clipped, unadorned speech stripped to not much more than verbs and pronouns. The page tells the fencer ‘you and I will try a veny below’,Footnote 13 and Clariana declares of her beauty, ‘’tis as it is, I cannot help it; yet I could paint, if I list’ (C3r). When Hippolito asks about her name she replies, ‘What would you do with it, if I told you?’ (C3r). By contrast, the dialogue in the David and Bethsabe segment is rich in elaboration, specification, and illustration. David is as sure of the help of God now as when ‘our young men, by the pool of Gibeon, | Went forth against the strength of Ishboseth, | And twelve to twelve did with their weapons play’.Footnote 14 Jonadab announces that ‘there hath great heaviness befall'n | In Amnon's fields by Absalon's misdeed; | And Amnon's shearers and their feast of mirth | Absalon hath o'erturned with his sword’ (7. 73–6). Instead of smart, witty exchanges, there is circumstance and unfolding narrative.
The 1660s comedies fall decisively at the latter end of this axis between a style heavy in prepositions and possessives and one turning on taut, active auxiliary verbs and staccato I, you, and it. Examining the 1660s comedy segments falling at the upper end of the component, those that have a concentrated version of this style, helps illustrate what the contrasts identified by the statistical analysis mean in terms of dramatic practice.
The forty-fourth 500-word segment of John Wilson's The Cheats has a score of 19.41 on PC1 – the highest of the 1660s comedies segments. It comprises the end of Act 5, Scene 3 and the beginning of Scene 4. These unconnected scenes both include exchanges about money: one farcical (Major Bilboe offering the landlord a thousand pounds on behalf of a protesting Alderman Whitebroth), and the other more straightforward (Jolly pressing money on his friend Runter). These are distinctly quotidian exchanges, with fragmented utterances, as in this prose speech of Bilboe's: ‘He shall, he shall. Burn it, ’tis but an old house – giv't him. Troth, I was afraid we should not have got him so low! You heard what he said – ’twas for my sake, too. I hope you'll consider it’.Footnote 15
Segment 28 of Dryden's An Evening's Love has a score of 19.28 on PC1, the next highest for this group. It comprises Jacinta's demand of 300 pistols from her inamorato Wildblood as a gambling stake, and the banter that follows. This is a quarrel in smart dialogue, intimate and insistent. Along the way, Wildblood accuses his man, Maskall, of taking his gold: ‘I'll be hanged if he have not lost my gold at play; if you have, confess, and perhaps I'll pardon you, but if you do not confess, I'll have no mercy.’Footnote 16 This is verisimilar, rather than poetic, dialogue, but supple and witty. The characters make direct demands of each other, and resist just as directly.
The next highest 1660s comedies segment is segment 14 of Thomas Shadwell's The Sullen Lovers, which has a PC1 score of 19.19. Huffe, a ‘hector’ or professional bully, asks Stanford for a loan, is roundly refused, and withdraws. Stanford's man, Roger, then enters and torments him with elaborate preliminaries, which Stanford angrily interrupts – ‘one similitude more, and I'll break that fool's head of yours’ – finally forcing his message out of him:
stanford. You dog! Tell me quickly or I'll cut your ears off.
roger. Why, Master Lovell would have you come to him.
What would you have?Footnote 17
The effect is quotidian and colloquial, not exotic. Speakers are direct, aggressive, and impatient. There are unadorned exchanges with inferiors, as with many of the segments with high scores along the component.
Segment 14 of James Howard's The English Monsieur is the next highest of the 1660s plays, with a PC1 score of 18.89. It covers a transaction between Vain, his servant Jack, and another hector, in which Vain offers the hector money to refrain from beating him, first through Jack. The dialogue is plain and to the point: Jack inquires, ‘An please you, sir, are not you employed as being a stout man to beat a gentleman here this evening?’ The hector replies, ‘Aye, boy. It is your master then, it seems.’Footnote 18
The next highest 1660s comedies segment is segment 26 of Shadwell's Sullen Lovers, with a PC1 score of 18.78. The ‘sullen’ or inhibited lovers of the title, Stanford and Emilia, discuss how to escape the attentions of the foolish obsessive characters, while expressing their admiration of each other in asides. This is a jerky dialogue of farcical distractions. Here, for example, Stanford fends off the attentions of Sir Positive At-all, who interrupts the lovers’ exchange:
sir positive. Jack? Hark ye?
stanford. For Heaven's sake! I have business.
sir positive. ’Tis all one for that, sir. Why, I'll tell you –
stanford. Another time; I beseech you, don't interrupt me now.
sir positive. ’Faith, but I must interrupt you.
The last part of the segment is an exchange between the play's more conventional lovers, Lovell and Emilia's sister, Carolina, on their marriage plans. Here the wit flows more smoothly, but the focus is still on immediate contingencies, rather than recollection or narrative:
carolina. I know you cannot love me; she's [= Lady Vain] your delight.
lovell. Yes, yes, I delight in her as I do in the toothache! I love her immoderately, as an English tailor loves a French tailor that's set up the next door to him.
The next highest of this group, and the last we shall discuss here, is segment 7 of William Cavendish's The Humorous Lovers, which has a PC1 score of 18.40. A flowery exchange between the lovers Courtly and Emilia is overheard by Colonel Boldman and the widow Lady Pleasant. Boldman's reaction to the lovers’ talk is gruff:
What language is this, madam? The Devil take me if I know what it is…[I]t has a touch here and there of English; I would you could make me understand it, madam.Footnote 19
The exchanges of this second couple occupy most of the segment. The widow is frank and outspoken; the colonel sceptical and sardonic, speaking in a manner described by the widow as the ‘rougher dialect’ of a soldier (C2v). After some verbal skirmishing, Lady Pleasant directly declares her love for Boldman: ‘Why then, ’tis that I love you’ (C3r). The effect is of verisimilitude through a conscious contrast with the poetical, and a striking frankness.
The dialogue of the 1660s comedies is clipped and staccato compared with pre-1642 drama in general, distinctly colloquial and shorn of elaboration and detail. In this, it fits a tendency in genre and chronology already present in the earlier drama, rather than standing outside it. To confirm this finding, we repeat the experiment using the 100 most common lexical rather than function words.Footnote 20 Figure 7.5 shows the resulting PCA scatterplot. Once again, the 1660s comedies score highly on the first principal component and are plotted to the right-hand end of the chart.
Figure 7.5 PCA scatterplot of 243 plays from 1580 to 1642 and 10 comedies from the 1660s, using the 100 most common lexical words.
Figure 7.6 shows the weightings for these lexical words on the two principal components, with the ten most heavily weighted words in each direction labelled.
Figure 7.6 Scatterplot of PCA weightings for the 100 most common lexical words in 243 plays from 1580 to 1642 and 10 comedies from the 1660s.
The words at the extreme lower (left-hand) end of the first component (earth and death) relate to elemental forces. Other words at the lower end relate to armies and battle (men, sword, and command), and suggest reflexiveness about solemn thinking and speaking (thoughts and words) and heightened emotions (full, base, and hell). These are opposed on this axis to words used in gossip and commonplace exchanges (indeed, marry, little, yes, better, and matter) and words marking social distinction (gentleman and gentlemen). Although not especially characteristic of the 1630–42 plays, as Figure 7.5 shows, these words are generally associated with comedy. The 1660s comedies take to extremes the characteristics of pre-1642 comedy, and, by the same token, are more remote from sombre and violent preoccupations than the earlier comedies, or the plays of the last decade before the closing of the theatres.
Mapping 1660s Tragicomedies
To compare the styles of the 1660s tragicomedies with patterns in the earlier plays, we repeat the procedures above, beginning with a PCA using the 100 most common function words in the 243 professional-company plays from 1580 to 1642, applied to a combined set of the 243 plays and eight 1660s tragicomedies – 251 plays in all. Figure 7.7 shows how the plays scored on the first and second principal components.
Figure 7.7 PCA scatterplot of 243 plays from 1580 to 1642 and 8 tragicomedies from the 1660s, using the 100 most common function words.
The 1660s tragicomedies appear at the right-hand, higher-scoring end of PC1, but share an area of the chart with 1630–42 plays and with pre-1642 tragicomedies. In this assay of style, the 1660s tragicomedies present continuity with the earlier patterns rather than any marked departure. One play, James Howard's All Mistaken, stands outside the main cluster, to the high end of PC1 and lower than the other 1660s tragicomedies on PC2. Henry the Fifth by Roger Boyle, Earl of Orrery, is to the opposite extreme, plotted as a cross in the top left of the chart. The contrast here is between the public focus of Boyle's history play and the more private orientation of Howard's, which is likely to score it lower on PC2. All Mistaken also has a strong comic element through its ‘carnivalesque’ sub-plot, which is likely to score it higher along PC1.Footnote 21
As before, we perform a PCA using the 100 most common lexical words, rather than function words (shown in Figure 7.8), accompanied by a scatterplot of PCA weightings for these words on the two principal components, with the ten most heavily weighted words in each direction labelled (Figure 7.9).
Figure 7.8 PCA scatterplot of 243 plays from 1580 to 1642 and 8 tragicomedies from the 1660s, using the 100 most common lexical words.
Figure 7.9 Scatterplot of PCA weightings for the 100 most common lexical words in 243 plays from 1580 to 1642 and 8 tragicomedies from the 1660s.
In this analysis, the 1660s tragicomedies are clustered to the low-scoring end of PC2, with the exception of one play – James Howard's All Mistaken, plotted with a cross in the upper right of Figure 7.8. As the most heavily weighted words labelled in Figure 7.9 suggest, PC2 seems to range from philosophical preoccupations (nature, strange, thought) and address to a senior female (madam) at the lower end, to a focus on immediate interpersonal activity (go, away, tell), and an abusive and emphatic element (god, base) at the higher end.
Edward Howard's 1660s tragicomedy, The Change of Crowns, is the lowest-scoring play on PC2 and the anonymous 1580s history play, The Famous Victories of Henry the Fifth, the highest-scoring. If we project 500-word segments on PC2, we find segment 37 of Jonson's The Devil is an Ass at the bottom, followed by segment 13 of Shirley's The Royal Master and then segment 4 of Howard's Change of Crowns. The Jonson segment has Lady Eitherside and Lady Tailbush discuss cosmetics and then entertain what they think is a Spanish lady, in fact Wittipol in disguise. Pretentious courtesy abounds. The Shirley passage covers the end of one scene, another short scene, and the beginning of a third – all courtly exchanges on the subject of courtship and love. The passage from Change of Crowns is also set in a court, with an emissary from the King of Lombardy presenting a proposal of marriage to the Queen of Naples, followed by a courtier with news of the Queen's sister, Ariana, after which Ariana enters and learns that her father is dead, with all that that implies about the succession to the kingdom.
By contrast, the highest-scoring 500-word segments are from Famous Victories (segments 16 and 2; highest and third highest respectively) and 2 Henry the Sixth (segment 36; second highest). Segment 16 of Famous Victories covers the recruiting activities of a captain meeting reluctance from a cobbler and a thief – plain, angular encounters. The second segment has the Prince conversing with his tavern companions. The passage from 2 Henry the Sixth comprises Jack Cade interviews with various followers and opponents – generally combative, abrupt, and abusive.
The 1660s tragicomedies are generally to the lower end of PC2, marked out among the generality of 1580–1642 drama as notably courtly and reflective. Four Shirley plays appear among the lowest seven on the component.
1660s Comedies and Tragicomedies and pre-1642 Authors
In addition to mapping the comedies and tragicomedies of the 1660s using PCA in relation to each other and pre-1642 drama, we can also use Delta to place the 1660s plays in relation to playwrights from the earlier period.
Delta is more typically used in attribution studies, but this experiment is not intended to establish authorship, which is not contested for any of the plays (and the pre-1642 playwrights would not be candidates in any case). Rather, the idea is to establish stylistic likeness. This is a matter of relative closeness only, since one playwright will necessarily be judged closest regardless of closeness in any absolute sense.
For this experiment, we treat the ten 1660s comedies as a single test text, averaging their word counts for the list of the 100 most common function words already used earlier in this chapter, and calculate a distance between each playwright with four or more pre-1642 plays and this combined text. Figure 7.10 shows the results.
Figure 7.10 Delta distances between a composite text of 10 1660s comedies and 15 playwrights with 4 or more pre-1642 plays, using the 100 most common function words.
Brome is the closest author to the composite text of 1660s comedies, followed by Middleton and Jonson. Peele, Greene, and Marlowe, all writing in the 1580s and 1590s, have high Delta scores – that is, are judged to be stylistically different from the 1660s comedies.
We repeat the procedure, this time using the 100 most common lexical words. As shown in Figure 7.11, Brome remains the closest author to the composite text of 1660s comedies, with the lowest Delta score. While order changes, the three highest-scoring and three lowest-scoring authors are the same as in Figure 7.10. Among the fifteen authors we tested, Brome is the closest stylistic match with the composite 1660s comedies text, with both function and lexical words.
Figure 7.11 Delta distances between a composite text of 10 1660s comedies and 15 playwrights with 4 or more pre-1642 plays, using the 100 most common lexical words.
Mindful of genre factors, we ran the same tests with comic plays, including all the plays in the set defined by the Annals as ‘Comedy’, ‘Comic Pastoral’, ‘Classical Legend (Comedy)’, ‘Domestic Comedy’, and ‘Romantic Comedy’. Ten authors have four or more comic plays by this definition, comprising eighty plays in all. For both tests, Brome was the closest author. Lyly was the most distant, corresponding to Figure 7.11 (since Marston, Marlowe, Greene, and Peele did not have enough comic plays in their canons to figure in the comic-plays set).Footnote 22
Brome is placed closest to the 1660s comedies each time. His comedy shows citizens aspiring to the world of fashion.Footnote 23 This is satiric rather than romantic comedy, with contemporary urban settings. Once the alignment is posited by the analysis, it is possible to see a likeness between this blend and the 1660s comedies, which are also urban, satiric, and contemporary, and to accept that of the fifteen mixed-genre and ten comic-play playwrights, Brome might be on balance the best match.
As before, we repeat the procedure, substituting tragicomedies for comedies and treating the eight 1660s tragicomedies as a composite text. After averaging their word counts for the list of the 100 most common function words, we calculate a distance between each playwright with four or more pre-1642 plays and this combined 1660s tragicomedies text (Figure 7.12).
Figure 7.12 Delta distances between a composite text of 8 1660s tragicomedies and 15 playwrights with 4 or more pre-1642 plays, using the 100 most common function words.
This time, Brome is the seventh closest author and Shirley the closest. The three authors with the highest scores (and thus the least similar in style) are the familiar trio of Peele, Marlowe, and Greene. When lexical rather than function words are used (Figure 7.13), Shirley is again the closest and Peele the most distant, but the order of the others is considerably different.Footnote 24
Figure 7.13 Delta distances between a composite text of 8 1660s tragicomedies and 15 playwrights with 4 or more pre-1642 plays, using the 100 most common lexical words.
Shirley's plays depict polite society with a moralising overlay, which may explain why they align so strongly with the 1660s tragicomedies, but less so with the 1660s comedies, which have a stronger satiric thrust.Footnote 25 A. H. Nason described Shirley as ‘the prophet of the Restoration’,Footnote 26 and G. K. Hunter argued that Shirley arrived at ‘the very threshold of Restoration comedy’.Footnote 27 Our analysis supports this connection, but only in relation to tragicomedy, given that Shirley is placed in the middle ranks or with the more remote authors in the four tests with the 1660s comedies described above.
Conclusion
In this chapter, we address a commonly asked question – how do Restoration plays relate in style to pre-1642 drama? – but we frame the question in a very specific way. How do select groups of plays, namely a set of ten 1660s comedies and one of eight 1660s tragicomedies, relate to a mixed group of pre-1642 plays?
Existing commentary has tended to focus on an individual predecessor such as Shakespeare, Jonson, or Fletcher, or on a wider sweep of Restoration drama, such as from 1660 to Congreve's The Way of the World (1700), or on selected Restoration authors such as Dryden or Etherege. Thus we are answering a question about Restoration drama not previously asked in this precise way. However, there are some general observations to be made. Our study supports continuity rather than rupture as a literary history connecting pre-1642 and 1660s English drama. Comedy of the 1660s aligns with the 1630–42 plays, and a number of ways to characterise the style of this alignment emerge. Tragicomedy of the 1660s fits the wider pattern of pre-1642 drama as well as it does plays of the 1630–42 period, and is as much traditional as modern. The analysis highlights Brome as a fore-runner of 1660s comedy, and puts Shirley to the fore as a precursor of 1660s tragicomedy.
Overall, the analysis suggests that the plays of the 1660s fit comfortably as successors to their forebears from the 1620s, 1630s, and 1640s. Despite the eighteen-year theatrical hiatus, the vastly changed social and political context, and developments in staging and dramaturgy, the plays of the 1660s take their place as the natural heirs of Caroline drama. In style, they neither revert back to earlier phases of pre-war drama – showing no special likeness to Shakespeare, for instance, despite his critical reputation in the period – nor take off in a new direction. The 1660s comedies are notably colloquial and clipped in their dialogue. The 1660s tragicomedies belong at the reflective and philosophical end of a spectrum between courtly and abrupt exchanges. Looking from the end of the pre-war era, they would seem modern, but not outlandish. The next question is whether, after this conservative beginning, change accelerated in the next decades of the Restoration, but this takes us beyond the limits of this particular study and beyond the ambit of our book.
