John Dryden was an English poet, literary critic, translator, and playwright who in 1668 was appointed England's first Poet Laureate.
Robert Cecil, 1st Earl of Salisbury, was an English statesman noted for his direction of the government during the Union of the Crowns, as Tudor England gave way to Stuart rule (1603). Lord Salisbury served as the Secretary of State of England (1596–1612) and Lord High Treasurer (1608–1612), succeeding his father as Queen Elizabeth I's Lord Privy Seal and remaining in power during the first nine years of King James I's reign until his own death.
"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.
Sir William Davenant, also spelled D'Avenant, was an English poet and playwright. Along with Thomas Killigrew, Davenant was one of the rare figures in English Renaissance theatre whose career spanned both the Caroline and Restoration eras and who was active both before and after the English Civil War and during the Interregnum.
George Villiers, 2nd Duke of Buckingham, 20th Baron de Ros, was an English statesman and poet who exerted considerable political power during the reign of Charles II of England.
Events from the year 1672 in literature.
This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1663.
The Rye House Plot of 1683 was a plan to assassinate King Charles II of England and his brother James, Duke of York. The royal party went from Westminster to Newmarket to see horse races and were expected to make the return journey on 1 April 1683, but because there was a major fire in Newmarket on 22 March, the races were cancelled, and the King and the Duke returned to London early. As a result, the planned attack never took place.
Absalom and Achitophel is a celebrated satirical poem by John Dryden, written in heroic couplets and first published in 1681. The poem tells the Biblical tale of the rebellion of Absalom against King David; in this context it is an allegory used to represent a story contemporary to Dryden, concerning King Charles II and the Exclusion Crisis (1679–1681). The poem also references the Popish Plot (1678).
Sir Charles Sedley, 5th Baronet, was an English noble, dramatist and politician. He was principally remembered for his wit and profligacy.
The Conquest of Granada by the Spaniards (1672), by John Dryden, is a two-part tragedy about the Spanish conquest of Granada (1482–1491), and the fall of Muhammad XII of Granada, the last Nasrit ruler of the Emirate of Granada (1230–1492), in southern Iberia. As a stageplay from the period of the English Restoration (1660), The Conquest of Granada is an example of the heroic drama genre in which the playwright Dryden was a pioneer writer; the first performance of the play was in 1670 and the first publication of the play was in 1672.
Elizabeth Boutell, was a British actress.
Michael Mohun was a leading English actor both before and after the 1642–60 closing of the theatres.
Charles Hart was a prominent British Restoration actor.
Restoration literature is the English literature written during the historical period commonly referred to as the English Restoration (1660-1688), which corresponds to the last years of Stuart reign in England, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland. In general, the term is used to denote roughly homogenous styles of literature that centre on a celebration of or reaction to the restored court of Charles II. It is a literature that includes extremes, for it encompasses both Paradise Lost and the Earl of Rochester's Sodom, the high-spirited sexual comedy of The Country Wife and the moral wisdom of The Pilgrim's Progress. It saw Locke's Treatises of Government, the founding of the Royal Society, the experiments and holy meditations of Robert Boyle, the hysterical attacks on theatres from Jeremy Collier, and the pioneering of literary criticism from John Dryden and John Dennis. The period witnessed news becoming a commodity, the essay developing into a periodical art form, and the beginnings of textual criticism.
Margaret Hughes, also Peg Hughes or Margaret Hewes, was an English actress who is often credited as the first professional actress on the English stage, as a result of her appearance on 8 December 1660. Hughes was the mistress of the English Civil War general Prince Rupert of the Rhine.
The Duke's Company was a theatre company chartered by King Charles II at the start of the Restoration era, 1660. Sir William Davenant was manager of the company under the patronage of Prince James, Duke of York. During that period, theatres began to flourish again after they had been closed from the restrictions throughout the English Civil War and the Interregnum. The Duke's Company existed from 1660 to 1682, when it merged with the King's Company to form the United Company.
Rebecca Marshall was a noted English actress of the Restoration era, one of the first generation of women performers on the public stage in Britain. She was the younger sister of Anne Marshall, another prominent actress of the period.
The Hind and the Panther: A Poem, in Three Parts (1687) is an allegory in heroic couplets by John Dryden. At some 2600 lines it is much the longest of Dryden's poems, translations excepted, and perhaps the most controversial. The critic Margaret Doody has called it "the great, the undeniable, sui generis poem of the Restoration era…It is its own kind of poem, it cannot be repeated ."
The Loyal Brother; Or, The Persian Prince is a 1682 tragedy by the Irish writer Thomas Southerne. It was first performed by the King's Company at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane in London. The prologue was written by John Dryden. It was Southerne's first play and was written in the context of the recent Exclusion Crisis and the Popish Plot from a Tory viewpoint. Two characters are thinly disguised versions of contemporary figures, the heroic Tachmas is James, Duke of York and the villain is the Whig politician the Earl of Shaftesbury. It was staged at a time when the growing Tory Reaction had swung power away from the Whigs trying to exclude the Catholic York from the throne.
