people revolted against Puritanism, and gave the incorrigible Stuarts
another chance, Charles the Wanderer returned to find them in a May-Day
humour. They thrust away from them for a little while the ghastly
spiritual hypochondria of which Puritanism was a manifestation, and
determined to make merry. But, heigh-ho! the day of Maypoles was over
and gone. From the beginning the jollity and laughter were forced, and
the new era of perpetual spring festival soon became an era of brainless
indecency. Even the wit of the Restoration was bitter, acid, sardonic
(as Charles's own death-bed apology for being an unconscionable time
a-dying). Generally it was ill-tempered, and employed to inflict pain.
And there was not even wit in most of the plays. It is hard to see what
even the worst age could discover to laugh at in Shadwell's _Libertine_,
the story of Don Juan told in English, and, in a sense, made the most
of.

Because of their nastiness, often combined with stupidity, the
Restoration dramas will never be resurrected. There is another reason.
The glorious Elizabethan era and spirit were gone; the eighteenth
century was coming on fast. Dryden and his fellows had noble rules for
the construction of plays, and nobler ones for the language that might
or might not be used. They derived all their rules, if you please, from
"the ancients." Like Voltaire, they reckoned Shakespeare a barbarian
with native wood-notes wild. They took his plays and "made them into
plays." They improved _The Tempest_, _Timon of Athens_, _The Midsummer
Night's Dream_, and goodness knows how many more. Davenant, in search of
material for entertainments, began it; Dryden continued it; even
Shadwell had his dirty fingers in it. And this matters to us, for some
of Purcell's most glorious songs, choruses and instrumental pieces were
composed for these desecrations, and can never again be listened to
under the conditions he had in his mind.