SOURCE: “The Courtier Playwrights,” in Cavalier Drama: An Historical and Critical Supplement to the Study of the Elizabethan and Restoration Stage, Russell & Russell, 1964, pp. 93-126.

In the following excerpt from a work originally published in 1936, Harbage surveys Killigrew's plays, judging them “entertaining for their sheer bravura and unabashed excess.”

Despite his traffic with drama, [Lodowick] Carlell was an old-fashioned courtier governing his life with a decorum befitting his elegant calling. Other courtly dramatists were younger men, modelled upon a newer ideal of gallantry, matching more nearly the popular conception of the Cavalier. In this younger set moved Thomas Killigrew (1612-83)¹ who has become, not with entire justice, traditional as a roisterer and roué. Killigrew belonged to a somewhat improvident younger branch of an old Cornish family, which ever since the accession of Elizabeth had been filling minor places in the court. His father was vice-chamberlain to Queen Henrietta...