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"Restoration comedy" is English comedy written and performed in the Restoration period of 1660–1710. Comedy of manners is used as a synonym for this. After public stage performances were banned for 18 years by the Puritan regime, reopening of the theatres in 1660 marked a renaissance of English drama. Sexually explicit language was encouraged by King Charles II (1660–1685) personally and by the rakish style of his court. Historian George Norman Clark argues:
The best-known fact about the Restoration drama is that it is immoral. The dramatists did not criticize the accepted morality about gambling, drink, love, and pleasure generally, or try, like the dramatists of our own time, to work out their own view of character and conduct. What they did was, according to their respective inclinations, to mock at all restraints. Some were gross, others delicately improper.... The dramatists did not merely say anything they liked: they also intended to glory in it and to shock those who did not like it.
Anne Oldfield was an English actress and one of the highest paid actresses of her time.
Susanna Verbruggen, aka Susanna Mountfort, was an English actress working in London.
William Mountfort, English actor and dramatic writer, was the son of a Staffordshire gentleman. He met his death at the hand of notorious brawler Charles Mohun, 4th Baron Mohun of Okehampton, who had just taken part in an attempted kidnap of Mountfort's friend, the actress Anne Bracegirdle.
Susanna Centlivre, born Susanna Freeman, and also known professionally as Susanna Carroll, was an English poet, actress, and "the most successful female playwright of the eighteenth century". Centlivre's "pieces continued to be acted after the theatre managers had forgotten most of her contemporaries." During a long career at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, she became known as the second woman of the English stage, after Aphra Behn.
Barton Booth was one of the most famous dramatic actors of the first part of the 18th century.
Anne Bracegirdle was an English actress.
John Baptista Verbruggen, d. 1708, was an English actor working in London. Verbruggen is first mentioned as a member of the United Company in a Lord Chamberlain's warrant in 1688. His name does not appear in any cast lists until October 1690. The Biographical Dictionary of Actors contains an inconclusive discussion of the statement in Thomas Davies's Dramatic Miscellanies (1784) that Verbruggen was identical to the actor referred to in 1680s and 90s cast lists as "Mr. Alexander", supposedly an alias based on the part of Alexander the Great in John Dryden's Rival Queens. The evidence is confusing, and there is no independent support for Davies's anecdote, written down a century later. Verbruggen had never played the part of Alexander the Great and was not to do so until January 1703.
Mary Kent was an English actress, whose career lasted from 1692 to 1718. Her dates of birth and death are not known. She was the wife of Drury Lane actor Thomas Kent.
Robert Wilks was a British actor and theatrical manager who was one of the leading managers of Theatre Royal, Drury Lane in its heyday of the 1710s. He was, with Colley Cibber and Thomas Doggett, one of the "triumvirate" of actor-managers that was denounced by Alexander Pope and caricatured by William Hogarth as leaders of the decline in theatrical standards and degradation of the stage's literary tradition.
An Act at Oxford is a 1704 comedy play by the English writer Thomas Baker. Although scheduled to appear at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane that year it had censorship problems from the Lord Chamberlain, likely through the influence of the Oxford University authorities. Although performed earlier it did not have its London debut at Drury Lane until October 1705 under the alternative title of Hampstead Heath.
The Wife of Bath is a 1713 comedy play by the British writer John Gay. It was inspired by The Wife of Bath's Tale by Geoffrey Chaucer. The play marked a conscious switch by Gay towards an apolitical and distant past, after his contemporary work The Mohocks had faced controversy and censorship the previous year. Robert Wilks, a celebrated actor and manager of the Drury Lane Theatre, appeared as Chaucer. The title role of the wife was played by Margaret Bicknell with Mary Porter as Myrtilla and the cast rounded out by William Bullock, Lacy Ryan, Christopher Bullock, William Pinkethman, Susanna Mountfort and Henry Norris.
John Mills (c.1670–1736) was a British stage actor. A long-standing part of the Drury Lane company from 1695 until his death, he appeared in both comedies and tragedies. His wife Margaret Mills was an actress, and his son William Mills also became an actor at Drury Lane.
John Bowman (1651–1739) was a British stage actor. He began his career in the Duke's Company at the Dorset Garden Theatre. In 1692 he married Elizabeth Watson, who acted under the name Elizabeth Bowman. He later switched to act at the Drury Lane Theatre. He is also referred to as John Boman.
Mary Willis was a British stage actress of the eighteenth century.
Elinor Leigh was a British stage actor of the seventeenth century.
The Female Advocates is a 1713 comedy play by the British writer William Taverner. The longer title is The Female Advocates: or, the Frantic Stock-jobber.
The Apparition: or, The Sham Wedding is a 1713 British comedy play written by an anonymous author.
George Pack was a British stage actor, singer and theatre manager of the eighteenth century. His first known performance on the London stage was as Westmoreland in Shakespeare's Henry IV at the Lincoln's Inn Fields Theatre and he remained with the company until it transferred to the Queens's Theatre in the Haymarket in 1705. He played in a mixture of comedies and tragedies, originating roles in plays by many of the leading dramatists of the era including Nicholas Rowe, Mary Pix, John Vanbrugh and Susanna Centlivre.
Jane Lucas was an English stage actress and singer of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth century. From around 1693 she was a member of the United Company based at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane. In 1697 she had fellow actor Colley Cibber arrested, although the reason was not clear and she remained acting in the company alongside him for some years afterwards.
