It would appear that Dryden, at the period of the Restoration, renounced all views of making his way in life except by exertion of the literary talents with which he was so eminently endowed.  His becoming a writer of plays was a necessary consequence; for the theatres, newly opened after so long silence, were resorted to with all the ardour inspired by novelty; and dramatic composition was the only line which promised something like an adequate reward to the professors of literature.  In our sketch of the taste of the seventeenth century previous to the Restoration, this topic was intentionally postponed.

In the times of James I. and of his successor, the theatre retained, in some degree, the splendour with which the excellent writers of the virgin reign had adorned it.  It is true, that authors of the latter period fell far below those gigantic poets, who flourished in the end of the sixteenth and beginning of the seventeenth centuries; but what the stage had lost in dramatic composition, was, in some degree, supplied by the increasing splendour of decoration, and the favour of the court.  A private theatre, called the Cockpit, was maintained at Whitehall, in which plays were performed before the court; and the king’s company of actors often received command to attend the royal progresses.[1] Masques, a species of representation calculated exclusively for the recreation of the great, in whose halls they were exhibited, were an usual entertainment of Charles and his consort.  The machinery and decorations were often superintended by Inigo Jones, and the poetry composed by Ben Jonson the laureate.  Even Milton deigned to contribute one of his most fascinating poems to the service of the drama; and, notwithstanding the severity of his puritanic tenets, “Comus” could only have been composed by one who felt the full enchantment of the theatre.  But all this splendour vanished at the approach of civil war.  The stage and court were almost as closely united in their fate as royalty and episcopacy, had the same enemies, the same defenders, and shared the same overwhelming ruin.  “No throne no theatre,” seemed as just a dogma as the famous “No king no bishop.”  The puritans indeed commenced their attack against royalty in this very quarter; and, while they impugned the political exertions of prerogative, they assailed the private character of the monarch and his consort, for the encouragement given to the profane stage, that rock of offence, and stumbling-block to the godly.  Accordingly, the superiority of the republicans was no sooner decisive, than the theatres were closed, and the dramatic poets silenced.  No department of poetry was accounted lawful; but the drama being altogether unhallowed and abominable, its professors were persecuted, while others escaped with censure from the pulpit, and contempt from the rulers.  The miserable shifts to which the surviving actors were reduced during the commonwealth, have been often detailed.  At times they were connived at by the caprice or indolence of their persecutors; but, in general, so soon as they had acquired any slender stock of properties, they were beaten, imprisoned, and stripped, at the pleasure of the soldiery.[2]