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80-798: Epsom Wells is a 1672 restoration comedy by the English writer Thomas Shadwell . It was the first in a line of plays set in spa towns . The incidental music was composed by Nicholas Staggins . In the 1690s Henry Purcell scored a new staging of the play. It was performed at the Dorset Garden Theatre by the Duke's Company . The cast included Henry Harris as Rains, Thomas Betterton as Bevil, William Smith as Woodly, Cave Underhill as Justice Clodpate, Anne Gibbs as Lucia, Mary Betterton as Mrs Jilt, James Nokes as Bisket and Edward Angel as Fribble. It continued to be revived well into

160-521: A Tub (1664), which has one heroic verse "conflict between love and friendship" plot, one urbane wit comedy plot, and one burlesque pantsing plot. ( See illustration, top right .) Such incongruities contributed to the low esteem held by Restoration comedy in the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries, whereas today such total theatre experience is again valued on the stage and by postmodern academic critics. The unsentimental or "hard" comedies of John Dryden , William Wycherley , and George Etherege reflected

240-583: A dimension of melancholy and frustration. After a forged-letter complication, the play ends with marriage between Heartfree and Bellinda and stalemate between the Brutes. Constant continues to pay court to Lady Brute, and she continues to shilly-shally. The tolerance for Restoration comedy even in its modified form was running out by the end of the 17th century, as public opinion turned to respectability and seriousness faster than playwrights did. Interconnected causes for this shift in taste were demographic change,

320-519: A fatal slope to the lowest common denominator of public taste. Rich's company notoriously offered Bartholomew Fair -type attractions – high kickers, jugglers, rope dancers, performing animals – while the co-operating actors, while appealing to snobbery by setting themselves up as the one legitimate theatre company in London, were not above retaliating with "prologues recited by boys of five and epilogues declaimed by ladies on horseback". Restoration comedy

400-410: A fixed place. One of the criteria of Norbert Elias' concept of a court society is that it existed in space. The German word Hof , meaning an enclosed courtyard , can also apply to a rural farmstead with outbuildings and walls forming the perimeter. It has also been used for the palatial seat where the court was held. Thus Hof or "court" can become transferred to the building itself. For example,

480-495: A gallant and a separate maintenance too." Bellinda is meanwhile grumpily courted by Constant's friend Heartfree, who is surprised and dismayed to find himself in love with her. The bad example of the Brutes is a constant warning to Heartfree not to marry. The Provoked Wife is a talk play, with the focus less on love scenes and more on discussions between friends, female (Lady Brute and Bellinda) and male (Constant and Heartfree). These are full of jokes, but are also thoughtful, with

560-529: A heavy hand, rather than actually performed it. Today Restoration comedy is again appreciated on stage. The classics – Wycherley's The Country Wife and The Plain-Dealer , Etherege's The Man of Mode , and Congreve's Love For Love and The Way of the World – have competition not only from Vanbrugh's The Relapse and The Provoked Wife , but from such dark, unfunny comedies as Thomas Southerne 's The Wives Excuse . Aphra Behn, once considered unstageable, has had

640-456: A major middle-class segment. They were attracted to the comedies by up-to-the-minute topical writing, crowded and bustling plots, introduction of the first professional actresses, and the rise of the first celebrity actors. The period saw the first professional female playwright, Aphra Behn . Charles II was an active and interested patron of drama. Soon after his restoration in 1660 he granted exclusive staging rights, so-called Royal patents , to

720-426: A renaissance, with The Rover now a repertory favourite. Distaste for sexual impropriety long kept Restoration comedy off the stage, locked in a critical poison cupboard. Victorian critics like William Hazlitt , though valuing the linguistic energy and "strength" of the canonical writers Etherege, Wycherley and Congreve, found it necessary to temper aesthetic praise with heavy moral condemnation. Aphra Behn received

800-455: A set of actors whom the public were inclined to support." Performers like the legendary Thomas Betterton , the tragedienne Elizabeth Barry and the rising young comedian Anne Bracegirdle had the audience on their side, and confident of this walked out. The actors gained a Royal "licence to perform", so bypassing Rich's ownership of the original Duke's and King's Company patents from 1660 and forming their own cooperative company. This venture

880-482: A single play were appreciated rather than frowned on: audiences prized "variety" within as well as between plays. Early Restoration audiences had little enthusiasm for structurally simple, well-shaped comedies such as those of Molière . They demanded bustling, crowded multi-plot action and fast pace. Even a splash of high heroic drama might be thrown in to enrich the comedy mix, as in George Etherege 's Love in

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960-405: A skirt, outlined by the male outfit." Successful Restoration actresses included Charles II's mistress Nell Gwyn , the tragedienne Elizabeth Barry , famous for an ability to "move the passions" and make whole audiences cry, the 1690s comedian Anne Bracegirdle , and Susanna Mountfort ( Susanna Verbruggen ), who had many roles written specially for her in the 1680s and 1690s. Letters and memoirs of

1040-402: A strict order of precedence , often involving imperial, royal and noble ranks , orders of chivalry , and nobility . Some courts even featured court uniforms . One of the major markers of a court is ceremony . Most monarchal courts included ceremonies concerning the investiture or coronation of the monarch and audiences with the monarch. Some courts had ceremonies around the waking and

1120-510: A strong middle-class element, and to female spectators, for instance by moving the war between the sexes from the arena of intrigue into that of marriage. The focus in comedy is less on young lovers outwitting the older generation, more on marital relations after the wedding bells. Thomas Southerne 's dark The Wives' Excuse (1691) is not yet "soft": it shows a woman miserably married to the fop Friendall, everybody's friend, whose follies and indiscretions undermine her social worth, as her honour

1200-449: A success. This closed system forced playwrights to respond strongly to popular taste. Fashions in drama would change almost week by week rather than season by season, as each company responded to the offerings of the other, and new plays were urgently sought. In this hectic climate the new genres of heroic drama , pathetic drama and Restoration comedy were born and flourished. Both the quantity and quality of drama suffered in 1682 when

1280-416: A variety of functions. At times, the harem was walled off and separate from the rest of the residence of the monarch. In Asia , concubines were often a more visible part of the court. Lower ranking servants and bodyguards were not properly called courtiers, though they might be included as part of the court or royal household in the broadest definition. Entertainers and others may have been counted as part of

1360-542: A very common character in Restoration comedy). Wycherley's The Plain Dealer (1676), a variation on the theme of Molière 's Le Misanthrope , was highly regarded for uncompromising satire and earned Wycherley the appellation "Plain Dealer" Wycherley or "Manly" Wycherley, after the play's main character Manly. The single play that does most to support the charge of obscenity levelled then and now at Restoration comedy

1440-399: Is a great success and Horner has sex with many married ladies of virtuous reputation, whose husbands are happy to leave them alone with him. In the famously outrageous "China scene", sexual intercourse is assumed to take place repeatedly just off stage, where Horner and his mistresses carry on a sustained double entendre dialogue purportedly about Horner's china collection. The Country Wife

1520-475: Is also acknowledged. Restoration comedy peaked twice. The genre came to marked maturity in the mid-1670s with an extravaganza of aristocratic comedies. Twenty lean years followed this short golden age, though the achievement of Aphra Behn in the 1680s can be noted. In the mid-1690s a brief second Restoration comedy renaissance arose, aimed at a wider audience. The comedies of the golden 1670s and 1690s peak times are extremely different from each other. An attempt

1600-418: Is bound up in his. Mrs Friendall is pursued by a would-be lover, a matter-of-fact rake devoid of all the qualities that made Etherege's Dorimant charming. She is kept from action and choice by the unattractiveness of all her options. The humour of this "comedy" is in the subsidiary love-chase and fornication plots, none in the main plot. In Congreve's Love for Love (1695) and The Way of the World (1700),

1680-516: Is driven by a succession of near-discoveries of the truth about Horner's sexual prowess (and so the truth about the respectable ladies), from which he extricates himself by quick thinking and luck. Horner never reforms, but keeps his secret to the end and is seen to go on merrily reaping the fruits of his planted misinformation past the last act and beyond. 2. The married life of Pinchwife and Margery draws on Molière's School for Wives . Middle-aged Pinchwife has married an ignorant young country girl in

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1760-489: Is made below to illustrate the generational taste shift by describing The Country Wife (1675) and The Provoked Wife (1697) in some detail. The two plays differ in some typical ways, just as a Hollywood movie of the 1950s differs from one of the 1970s. The plays are not, however, offered as "typical" of their decades. Indeed, there exist no typical comedies of the 1670s or the 1690s; even within these two short peak-times, comedy types kept mutating and multiplying. The drama of

1840-407: Is meanwhile tempted to embark on an affair with the witty and faithful Constant. Divorce is no option for either of the Brutes at this time, but forms of legal separation have recently arisen and would entail separate maintenance for the wife. Such an arrangement would prevent remarriage. Still, muses Lady Brute, in one of many discussions with her niece Bellinda, "These are good times. A woman may have

1920-431: Is only over the last few decades that the statement has become untrue, with Restoration comedy acknowledged as a rewarding subject for high theory analysis, and Wycherley's The Country Wife , long branded the most obscene play in the English language, becoming something of an academic favourite. "Minor" comic writers are getting a fair share of attention, especially the post-Aphra Behn generation of women playwrights around

2000-455: Is probably Wycherley's The Country Wife (1675). The Country Wife has three interlinked but distinct plots, which each project sharply different moods: 1. Horner's impotence trick provides the main plot and the organising principle. The upper-class rake Horner mounts a campaign to seduce as many respectable ladies as possible, first spreading a false rumour of his own impotence, so as to be allowed where no other men might go. The trick

2080-444: Is reduced once more to that of noble households, concentrating on personal service to the household head, ceremonial and perhaps some residual politico-advisory functions. If republican zeal has banished an area's erstwhile ruling nobility , courts may survive in exile . Traces of royal court practices remain in present-day institutions like privy councils and governmental cabinets. A series of Pharaohs ruled Ancient Egypt over

2160-545: Is something of a Restoration problem play in its attention to the subordinate legal position of married women and the complexities of "divorce" and separation, issues that had been highlighted in the mid-1690s by some notorious cases before the House of Lords (see Stone). Sir John Brute in The Provoked Wife is tired of matrimony. He comes home drunk every night and is continually rude and insulting to his wife. She

2240-431: Is the way Pinchwife's pathological jealousy always leads him into supplying Margery with the very information he wishes her not to have. 3. The courtship of Harcourt and Alithea is a comparatively uplifting love story, in which the witty Harcourt wins the hand of Pinchwife's sister Alithea from the hands of the upper-class town snob Sparkish, to whom she was engaged until discovering he loved her only for her money. When

2320-527: The "wit duels" between lovers typical of 1670s comedy are underplayed. The give-and-take set pieces of couples still testing their attraction for each other have mutated into witty prenuptial debates on the eve of marriage, as in the famous "Proviso" scene in The Way of the World (1700). Vanbrugh's The Provoked Wife (1697) follows in the footsteps of Southerne's Wives' Excuse , with a lighter touch and more humanly recognisable characters. The Provoked Wife

2400-662: The Byzantine Empire , Islamic Empire, Mamluk Sultanate, Ottoman Empire and British Empire with a distant monarch. The Sultanate of Egypt was a short lived protectorate of the United Kingdom from 1914 until 1922, when it became the Kingdom of Egypt and Sultan Fuad I changed his title to King. After the Egyptian Revolution of 1952 the monarchy was dissolved and Egypt became a republic. In

2480-709: The Glorious Revolution of 1688, William 's and Mary 's dislike of the theatre, and the lawsuits brought against playwrights by the Society for the Reformation of Manners (founded in 1692). When Jeremy Collier attacked Congreve and Vanbrugh in his Short View of the Immorality and Profaneness of the English Stage in 1698, he was confirming a shift in audience taste that had taken place. At

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2560-933: The Heian period , Japanese emperors and their families developed an exquisitely refined court that played an important role in their culture. After the collapse of the Roman Empire in the West, a true court culture can be recognised in the entourage of the Ostrogoth Theodoric the Great and in the court of Charlemagne . In the Roman East, a brilliant court continued to surround the Byzantine emperors . In Western Europe , consolidation of power of local magnates and of kings in fixed administrative centres from

2640-751: The Horn of Africa , the Kingdom of Aksum and later the Zagwe dynasty , Ethiopian Empire (1270–1974), and Aussa Sultanate all had royal courts. Various Somali Sultanates also existed, including the Adal Sultanate (led by the Walashma dynasty of the Ifat Sultanate ), Sultanate of Mogadishu , Ajuran Sultanate , Warsangali Sultanate, Geledi Sultanate , Majeerteen Sultanate and Sultanate of Hobyo . The kingship system has been an integral part of

2720-843: The King's Company and the Duke's Company , led by two middle-aged Caroline playwrights, Thomas Killigrew and William Davenant . The patentees scrambled for performance rights to the previous generation's Jacobean and Caroline plays, as the first necessity for economic survival before any new plays existed. Their next priority was to build splendid patent theatres in Drury Lane and Dorset Gardens , respectively. Striving to outdo each other, Killigrew and Davenant ended with quite similar theatres, both designed by Christopher Wren , both optimally providing music and dancing, and both fitted with moveable scenery and elaborate machines for thunder, lightning, and waves. The Restoration dramatists renounced

2800-532: The Kingdom of Macedonia , developing a royal court that would later influence the courts of Hellenistic Greece and the Roman Empire . The Sasanian Empire adopting and developing the earlier court culture and customs of the Achaemenid Empire would also influence again the development of the complex court and court customs of the Roman Empire and Byzantine Empire . The imperial court of

2880-907: The Mande members of the Tunkalemmu caste in Mali, the Bamum sultans of Cameroon , the Kanem shaykhs of Chad , the Hausa emirs of northern Nigeria , the inkosis of the Southern African Zulus and Xhosas , and the obas and baales of Yorubaland , amongst others, continue the pageantry and court lifestyle traditions once common to the continent. Court officials or office-bearers (one type of courtier ) derived their positions and retained their titles from their original duties within

2960-833: The Neo-Assyrian Empire and Zhou dynasty . Two of the earliest titles referring to the concept of a courtier were likely the ša rēsi and mazzāz pāni of the Neo-Assyrian Empire. In Ancient Egypt, there is a title translated as high steward or great overseer of the house. The royal courts influenced by the court of the Neo-Assyrian Empire such as those of the Median Empire and the Achaemenid Empire would also have identifiable developed courts with court appointments and other features associated with later courts. The imperial court of

3040-735: The Omayyad , the Fatimid and the Abbasid ) to become the largest, most culturally developed cities of their time. This drew talented people from all walks of life—such as musicians , singers , poets and scientists —to seek employment under the patronage of elite bureaucrats , emirs and Sultans at court. The other Caliphate was the Ottoman , which employed its court's culture to stabilize an empire inhabited by huge non-Islamic populations spanning three continents . Everything from Algeria to

3120-485: The Tories John Dryden and Aphra Behn . Behn's achievement as an early professional woman writer has been the subject of much recent study. During a second wave of Restoration comedy in the 1690s, the "softer" comedies of William Congreve and John Vanbrugh reflected mutating cultural perceptions and great social change. The playwrights of the 1690s set out to appeal to more socially mixed audiences with

3200-469: The 1660s and 1670s was vitalised by the competition between the two patent companies created at the Restoration, and by the personal interest of Charles II, while comic playwrights arose to the demand for new plays. They stole freely from the contemporary French and Spanish stage, from English Jacobean and Caroline plays, and even from Greek and Roman classical comedies, combining the looted plotlines in adventurous ways. Resulting differences of tone in

3280-426: The Achaemenid Empire at Persepolis and Pasargadae is the earliest identifiable complex court with all of the definitive features of a royal court such as a household, court appointments , courtiers, and court ceremony. Though Alexander the Great had an entourage and the rudimentary elements of a court, it was not until after he conquered Persia that he took many of the more complex Achaemenid court customs back to

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3360-646: The Burgundian court would write one of the seminal books on court etiquette, Les honneurs de la cour ( Honours of the Court ). Court life would reach its apogee of culture, complexity and etiquette at the courts of Versailles under Louis XIV of France and the Hofburg under the Habsburgs . As political executive functions are assumed by democratic or republican institutions, the function of noble courts

3440-654: The Byzantine Empire at Constantinople would eventually contain at least a thousand courtiers. The court's systems became prevalent in other courts such as those in the Balkan states, the Ottoman Empire , and Russia . Byzantinism is a term that was coined for this spread of the Byzantine system in the 19th century. The imperial courts of Chinese emperors , known as cháotíng ( 朝廷 ), were among

3520-482: The atmosphere at Court. They celebrated with frankness an aristocratic macho lifestyle of unremitting sexual intrigue and conquest. The Earl of Rochester , a real-life Restoration rake, courtier and poet, is flatteringly portrayed in Etherege's The Man of Mode (1676) as a riotous, witty, intellectual, sexually irresistible aristocrat, a template for posterity's idea of the glamorous Restoration rake (actually never

3600-550: The bread" at table, and a court is an extension of the great individual's household. Wherever members of the household and bureaucrats of the administration overlap in personnel, it is reasonable to speak of a "court", for example in Achaemenid Persia , Ming China , Norman Sicily , the papacy before 1870 (see: papal household ), and the Austro-Hungarian Empire . A group of individuals dependent on

3680-472: The condemnation without the praise, as outspoken sex comedy was seen as particularly offensive from a woman author. At the turn of the 20th century, an embattled minority of academic Restoration comedy enthusiasts began to appear, such as the editor Montague Summers , whose work ensured that plays of Restoration comedy authors remained in print. "Critics remain astonishingly defensive about the masterpieces of this period," wrote Robert D. Hume as late as 1976. It

3760-400: The course of three millennia ( c.  3150 BC to 31 BC), until it was conquered by the Roman Empire . In the same time period several kingdoms with their own royal courts flourished in the nearby Nubia region, with at least one of them, that of the so-called A-Group culture, apparently influencing the customs of Egypt itself. From the 6th to 19th centuries, Egypt was variously part of

3840-400: The court. A royal household is the highest-ranking example of patronage . A regent or viceroy may hold court during the minority or absence of the hereditary ruler, and even an elected head of state may develop a court-like entourage of unofficial, personally-chosen advisers and "companions". The French word compagnon and its English derivation "companion" literally mean a "sharer of

3920-447: The court. These courtiers included the monarch or noble's camarilla and retinue , household, nobility, clergy , those with court appointments , bodyguards , and may also include emissaries from other kingdoms or visitors to the court. Foreign princes and foreign nobility in exile may also seek refuge at a court. Near Eastern and Far Eastern courts often included the harem and concubines as well as eunuchs who fulfilled

4000-472: The courtly household. With time, such duties often became archaic. However, titles survived involving the ghosts of arcane duties. These styles generally dated back to the days when a noble household had practical and mundane concerns as well as high politics and culture. Such court appointments each have their own histories. They might include but are not limited to: Earlier courts in medieval Western Europe were itinerant courts , but courts were often held in

4080-440: 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. The socially diverse audiences included aristocrats, their servants and hangers-on and

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4160-527: The eighteenth century. This article on a play from the 17th century is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Restoration comedy 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

4240-456: The freedom society allowed to men. Some feminist critics such as Jacqueline Pearson saw them as subverting conventional gender roles and empowering female members of the audience. Elizabeth Howe has objected that the male disguise, when studied in relation to play texts, prologues, and epilogues, comes out as "little more than yet another means of displaying the actress as a sexual object" to male patrons, by showing off her body, normally hidden by

4320-518: The grand residence Hampton Court Palace on the River Thames above London was where Thomas Wolsey held court as Catholic cardinal (built after the Italian ideal for a cardinal's palace) until his fall and its confiscation by Henry VIII . William III and Mary II also held court there, 1689–94. Though it is built round two main courts, the structure itself is no longer the seat of a court in

4400-473: The hope that she will not know to cuckold him. Horner teaches her, and Margery cuts a swathe through the sophistications of London marriage without even noticing them. She is enthusiastic about the virile handsomeness of town gallants, rakes, and especially theatre actors (such self-referential stage jokes were nourished by the new higher status of actors), and keeps Pinchwife in a state of continual horror with her plain-spokenness and interest in sex. A running joke

4480-496: The largest and most complex of all. The Han dynasty , Western Jin dynasty , and Tang dynasty occupied the large palace complex at Weiyang Palace located near Chang'an , and the later Ming dynasty and Qing dynasty occupied the whole Forbidden City and other parts of Beijing , the present capital city of China . By the Sui dynasty , the functions of the imperial household and the imperial government were clearly divided. During

4560-522: The lawyer Christopher Rich , who tried to finance a tangle of "farmed" shares and sleeping partners by slashing salaries and dangerously by abolishing traditional perks of senior performers, who were stars with the clout to fight back. The company owners, wrote the young United Company employee Colley Cibber , "had made a monopoly of the stage, and consequently presum'd they might impose what conditions they pleased upon their people. [They] did not consider that they were all this while endeavouring to enslave

4640-521: The leading man in the Duke's Company, and played Dorimant, the seminal irresistible Restoration rake , at the première of George Etherege 's Man of Mode (1676). Betterton's position remained unassailed through the 1680s, both as leading man of the United Company and as its stage manager and de facto day-to-day leader. He remained loyal to Rich longer than many of his co-workers, but eventually it

4720-508: The least important draw, no performance being advertised by an author until 1699). Although playhouses were built for large audiences – the second Drury Lane theatre from 1674 held 2000 patrons – they were compact in design and an actor's charisma could be intimately projected from the thrust stage . With two companies competing for their services from 1660 to 1682, star actors could negotiate star deals, comprising company shares and benefit nights as well as salaries. This advantage changed when

4800-536: The mid-13th century led to the creation of a distinct court culture that was the centre of intellectual and artistic patronage rivaling the abbots and bishops , in addition to its role as the apex of a rudimentary political bureaucracy that rivaled the courts of counts and dukes. The dynamics of hierarchy welded the court cultures together. Many early courts in Western Europe were itinerant courts that traveled from place to place. Local courts proliferated in

4880-610: The more centralised African societies for millennia. This is especially true in the West African sahel , where royal courts have been in existence since at least the era of the 9th century Takrur and Ghana empires . The ruler of the 13th century Mali empire , Mansa Musa , brought a large number of his courtiers with him on the Islamic Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca . Today, the courts of the Ashanti nanas in modern Ghana ,

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4960-477: The more successful Duke's Company absorbed the struggling King's Company to form the United Company . Production of new plays dropped off sharply in the 1680s, affected by the monopoly and the political situation (see Decline of comedy below). The influence and incomes of actors dropped too. In the late 1680s, predatory investors ("adventurers") converged on the United Company. Management was taken over by

5040-458: The much-anticipated all-star première in 1700 of The Way of the World , Congreve's first comedy for five years, the audience showed only moderate enthusiasm for that subtle and almost melancholy work. The comedy of sex and wit was about to be replaced by the drama of obvious sentiment and exemplary morality. During the 18th and 19th centuries, the sexual frankness of Restoration comedy ensured that theatre producers cannibalised it or adapted it with

5120-641: The patronage of a great man, classically in ancient Rome, forms part of the system of "clientage" that is discussed under vassal . Individual rulers differed greatly in tastes and interests, as well as in political skills and in constitutional situations. Accordingly, some founded elaborate courts based on new palaces , only to have their successors retreat to remote castles or to practical administrative centers. Personal retreats might arise far away from official court centres. Etiquette and hierarchy flourish in highly structured court settings, and may leave conservative traces over generations. Most courts featured

5200-493: The period show men and women in the audience relishing Mountfort's swaggering, roistering impersonations of young women breeched to enjoy the social and sexual freedom of male Restoration rakes . Male and female actors on the London stage in the Restoration period became for the first time public celebrities . Documents of the period show audiences attracted to performances by the talents of specific actors as much as by specific plays, and more than by authors (who seem to have been

5280-458: The playhouse to watch or re-watch performances by particular actresses and to his enjoyment of these. Daringly suggestive comedy scenes involving women became especially common, although of course Restoration actresses were, just like male actors, expected to do justice to all kinds and moods of plays. (Their role in the development of Restoration tragedy is also important, compare She-tragedy .) A speciality introduced almost as early as actresses

5360-413: The resulting actors' cooperative. Betterton played every great male part there was from 1660 into the 18th century. After watching Hamlet in 1661, Pepys reports in his diary that the young beginner Betterton "did the prince's part beyond imagination." Such expressive performances seem to have attracted playgoers as magnetically, as did the novelty of seeing women on the stage. He was soon established as

5440-540: The root of the current Spanish congress and senate . The courts of Valois Burgundy and the Kingdom of Portugal were particularly influential over the development of court culture and pageantry in Europe. The court of Philip the Good , Duke of Burgundy was considered one of the most splendid in Europe and would influence the development of court life later on for all of France and Europe. Later, Aliénor de Poitiers of

5520-669: The sense of this article. As an example, ambassadors to the United Kingdom are still accredited to the Court of St. James's , and courtiers of the monarchy may still have offices in St James's Palace , London. The present monarch, however, holds court at Buckingham Palace , where dignitaries are received. Some former seats of power (see official residence ): All four major Caliphates had sophisticated courts ; this enabled Cordoba , Cairo and Baghdad (the respective seats of

5600-472: The sleeping of the monarch, called a levée . Orders of chivalry as honorific orders became an important part of court culture starting in the 15th century. They were the right of the monarch , as the fount of honour , to create and grant. The earliest developed courts were probably in the Akkadian Empire , Ancient Egypt , and Shang dynasty . However, there is evidence of courts as described in

5680-586: The splintered polities of medieval Europe and remained in early modern times in Germany and in Italy. Such courts became known for intrigue and power politics ; some also gained prominence as centres and collective patrons of art and culture . In medieval Spain ( Castile ), provincial courts were created. Minor noblemen and burguesie allied to create a system to oppose the monarchy on many policy issues. They were called "las Cortes de Castilla". These courts are

5760-421: 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

5840-436: The tradition of satire recently embodied by Ben Jonson , devoting themselves to a comedy of manners that accepted the social code of the upper class uncritically. The audience of the early Restoration period was not exclusively courtly , as has sometimes been supposed, but it was quite small and could barely support two companies. There was no untapped reserve of occasional playgoers. Ten consecutive performances constituted

5920-491: The turn of the 18th century: Delarivier Manley , Mary Pix , Catharine Trotter , and Susanna Centlivre . A broad study of most never-reprinted Restoration comedies has been made possible by internet access (by subscription only) to the first editions at the British Library . Selected seminal critical studies: Noble court In the largest courts, the royal households, many thousands of individuals constituted

6000-520: The two companies merged in 1682 and the London stage became a monopoly, both the number and the variety of new plays dropped sharply. There was a swing away from comedy to serious political drama, reflecting preoccupations and divisions after the Popish Plot (1678) and Exclusion Crisis (1682). The few comedies produced tended to be political in focus, the Whig dramatist Thomas Shadwell sparring with

6080-511: The two companies were amalgamated in 1682, but the way the actors rebelled and took command of a new company in 1695 is in itself an illustration of how far their status and power had developed since 1660. The greatest fixed stars among Restoration actors were Elizabeth Barry ("Famous Mrs Barry" who "forc 'd Tears from the Eyes of her Auditory") and Thomas Betterton , both active in running the actors' revolt in 1695 and both original patent-holders in

6160-511: Was he who headed an actors' walkout in 1695 and became the acting manager of the new company. Variety and dizzying fashion changes are typical of Restoration comedy. Though the "Restoration drama" unit taught to college students is likely to be telescoped in a way that makes the plays all sound contemporary, scholars now have a strong sense of the rapid evolution of English drama over these 40 years and its social and political causes. The influence of theatre-company competition and playhouse economics

6240-518: Was set up with detailed rules for avoiding arbitrary managerial authority, regulating the ten actors' shares, setting the conditions of salaried employees and the sickness and retirement benefits of both categories. The cooperative had the good luck to open in 1695 with the première of William Congreve 's famous Love For Love and the skill to make it a huge box-office success. London again had two competing companies. Their dash to attract audiences briefly revitalised Restoration drama, but also set it on

6320-410: Was strongly influenced by the first professional actresses. Before the closing of the theatres , all female roles had been taken by boy players and the predominantly male audiences of the 1660s and 1670s were curious, censorious and delighted at the novelty of seeing real women engage in risqué repartee and take part in physical seduction scenes. Samuel Pepys refers many times in his diary to visiting

6400-403: Was the breeches role – an actress appearing in male clothes (breeches of tight-fitting knee-length pants, the standard male garment of the time), for instance to play a witty heroine who disguises herself as a boy to hide or to engage in escapades disallowed to girls. A quarter of the plays produced on the London stage between 1660 and 1700 contained breeches roles. Women playing them behaved with

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