Rightly characterized by Allardyce Nicoll as "one of the most prolific and diversified playwrights of the time," Charles Johnson is the most singularly neglected playwright of the first half of the eighteenth century. Two of his plays were repertory standards throughout the century, and his extensive oeuvre spanned more than two decades; such evidence certainly lends credence to the claim that he deserves to be included in the category of major playwrights of his era, along with George Farquhar, Joseph Addison, Richard Steele, and John Gay. And just as the dramatic career of Thomas Shadwell may be seen as a microcosm of London dramatic tastes and fashions for more than two decades during the late seventeenth century, so may we view Charles Johnson's from 1710 through to the early 1730s. Author of seventeen plays, sixteen of them produced, Johnson had an uncanny sense of what was au courant: his...