SOURCE: Loftis, John. “The End of the War and Change in Comedy, 1710-1728.” In Comedy and Society from Congreve to Fielding, pp. 77-100. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1959.

In the following excerpt, Loftis provides the political and social context for the increasingly favorable representation of merchant characters in early eighteenth century comedy. He groups Centlivre with Richard Steele and Colley Cibber as the leading playwrights of the era, observing that their artistic success correlates with their sympathy for the merchant classes and for Whiggish values in general.

In William III's reign and in the earlier years of Anne's, party politics had little discernible impact on the social themes of comedy. Before 1710 or thereabouts, playwrights sometimes expressed partisan political attitudes toward the war and related taxation and made topical allusions with political overtones, but they did not interpret class conflicts according to party principles. The reason is simple: it...