SOURCE: Kaufman, Anthony. “Civil Politics—Sexual Politics in John Crowne's City Politiques.” Restoration: Studies in English Literary Culture, 1660-1700 6, no. 2 (fall 1982): 72-80.

In the following essay, Kaufman analyzes Crowne's satire of the Whigs in City Politiques.

John Crowne's City Politiques (January, 1683) speaks to the Popish Plot-Exclusion Bill crisis of 1678-1682, and like many of the other propaganda comedies of that turbulent period, it utilizes certain of the formulae of the seventeenth-century comedy of amorous intrigue.¹ But unlike most of the rather predictable political comedies of this period, City Politiques embodies within the conventions of sex comedy a trenchant political statement. Crowne was at the time of the play a court man (who nevertheless appears to have disliked the court milieu) writing in the service of the loyalists.² But City Politiques, like Venice Preserved of the preceding year, and Lucius Junius Brutus of 1680, goes beyond historical topicality to portray...