We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 May 2006
our best poets have differed from other Nations (though not so happily) in usually mingling and interweaving Mirth and Sadness through the whole Course of their Plays, Ben. Johnson only excepted.
Sir Robert Howard, Four New Playes (1665)This Oleo of a Play; this unnatural mixture of Comedy and Tragedy
John Dryden, An Essay of Dramatick Poesie (1668)Sometime at the end of the seventeenth century, George Villiers, the second Duke of Buckingham, wrote a play which he called The Restauration: Or, Right will take Place. A Tragicomedy (February 1683). Since the beheading of the English monarch Charles I in 1649, the idea of “Restoration” had obsessed English playwrights – the theme permeates Restoration drama. Not coincidentally, Buckingham's title includes the designation “A Tragicomedy.” To an experienced reader of seventeenth-century drama, the plot of The Restauration sounds very familiar. A usurping king harasses a dispossessed prince, Philander, whose countrymen are waiting to take arms in his defense. A foreign prince has just arrived to marry the princess and thus becomes heir to the throne.
To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.
