time at least, would have demanded a revival of those pieces which had
been most successful before the civil wars; and that Shakespeare,
Massinger, and Fletcher, would have resumed their acknowledged
superiority upon the English stage. But as the theatres were
re-established and cherished by the immediate influence of the
sovereign, and of the court which returned with him from exile, a taste
formed during their residence abroad dictated the nature of
entertainments which were to be presented to them. It is worthy of
remark, that Charles took the models of the two grand departments of the
drama from two different countries.

France afforded the pattern of those tragedies which continued in
fashion for twenty years after the Restoration, and which were called
Rhyming or Heroic Plays. In that country, however, contrary to the
general manners of the people, a sort of stately and precise ceremonial
early took possession of the theatre. The French dramatist was under the
necessity of considering less the situation of the persons of the drama,
than that of the performers who were to represent it before a monarch
and his court. It was not, therefore, sufficient for the author to
consider how human beings would naturally express themselves in the
predicament of the scene; he had the more embarrassing task of so
modifying their expressions of passion and feeling, that they might not
exceed the decorum necessary in the august presence of the _grand
monarque_. A more effectual mode of freezing the dialogue of the drama
could hardly have been devised, than by introducing into the theatre the
etiquette of the drawing-room. That etiquette also, during the reign of
Louis XIV., was of a kind peculiarly forced and unnatural The romances
of Calprenède and Scudéry, those ponderous and unmerciful folios now
consigned to utter oblivion, were in that reign not only universally
read and admired, but supposed to furnish the most perfect models of