SOURCE: Palmer, John. “Critical Preliminaries.” In The Comedy of Manners, pp. 1-29. 1913. Reprint. New York: Russell & Russell, Inc., 1962.

In the following essay, originally published in 1913, Palmer describes the impact that Jeremy Collier's Short View of the Profaneness and Immorality of the English Stage had on the comedy of manners.

Who are the comic dramatists of the Restoration? Dryden wrote comedies; Shadwell's Squire of Alsatia was as popular in its day and regarded as of equal importance with The Country Wife; Sir Charles Sedley, Buckingham, and Rochester, have a claim to be included; Aphra Behn, Crowne and Settle could not very well be omitted in an exhaustive study of the comedy of the period; Otway was the author of no fewer than three original comedies; Colley Cibber was a formidable contemporary rival of Vanbrugh and Farquhar. But it is obviously impossible within the limits of a single volume to...