From the stern and gloomy morals of the Commonwealth we now turn to the debaucheries of the court,—­from cropped heads and dark cloaks to plumes and velvet, gold lace and embroidery,—­to the varied fashions of every kind for which Paris has always been renowned, and which Charles brought back with him from his exile;—­from prudish morals to indiscriminate debauchery; from the exercisings of brewers’ clerks, the expounding of tailors, the catechizing of watermen, to the stage, which was now loudly petitioned to supply amusement and novelty.  Macaulay justly says:  “The restraints of that gloomy time were such as would have been impatiently borne, if imposed by men who were universally believed to be saints; these restraints became altogether insupportable when they were known to be kept up for the profit of hypocrites!  It is quite certain that if the royal family had never returned, there would have been a great relaxation of manners.”  It is equally certain, let us add, that morals would not have been correspondingly relaxed.  The revulsion was terrible.  In no period of English history was society ever so grossly immoral; and the drama, which we now come to consider, displays this immorality and license with a perfect delineation.

The English people had always been fond of the drama in all its forms, and were ready to receive it even contaminated as it was by the licentious spirit of the time.  An illiterate and ignorant people cannot think for themselves; they act upon the precepts and example of those above them in knowledge and social station:  thus it is that a dissolute monarch and a subservient aristocracy corrupt the masses.

DRYDEN’S PLAYS.—­Although Dryden’s reputation is based on his other poems, and although his dramas have conduced scarcely at all to his fame, he did play a principal part in this department of literary work.  Dryden made haste to answer the call, and his venal muse wrote to please the town.  The names of many of his plays and personages are foreign; but their vitality is purely English.  Of his first play, The Duke of Guise, which was unsuccessful, he tells us:  “I undertook this as the fairest way which the Act of Indemnity had left us, as setting forth the rise of the great rebellion, and of exposing the villanies of it upon the stage, to precaution posterity against the like errors;”—­a rebellion the master-spirit of which he had eulogized upon his bier!

His second play, The Wild Gallant, may be judged by the fact that it won for him the favor of Charles II. and of his mistress, the Duchess of Cleveland.  Pepys saw it “well acted;” but says, “It hath little good in it.”  It is not our purpose to give a list of Dryden’s plays; besides their occasional lewdness, they are very far inferior to his poems, and are now rarely read except by the historical student.  They paid him in ready money, and he cannot ask payment from posterity in fame.

On the 13th of January, 1667-8, (we are told by Pepys,) the ladies and the Duke of Monmouth acted The Indian Emperour at court.