SOURCE: Lewis, Peter. “‘The Rehearsal’: A Study of Its Satirical Methods.” In Die Englische Satire, edited by Wolfgang Weiss, pp. 284-314. Darmstadt, Germany: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1982.

In the following essay, originally published in 1970, Lewis explores the methods used by Buckingham in satirizing Dryden, D'Avenant, and others in The Rehearsal.

The Rehearsal is the archetype of most later Restoration and Augustan dramatic burlesques. A few pre-Commonwealth plays such as The Knight of the Burning Pestle might be regarded as burlesques, and, to judge from Jonson's satirical portraits of his contemporaries in Every Man out of his Humour and Poetaster and Dekker's equally incisive reply in Satiromastix, scurrilous caricature on the stage did not begin with the presentation of Dryden as Bayes in The Rehearsal; but in its total organization, the Duke of Buckingham's play was a highly original contribution to English drama.¹ It was also extremely influential, initiating the flow...