public is repeated by Davenant, in the Prologue to his "Unfortunate
Lovers." He tells the spectators that they expect to have in two hours
ten times more wit than was allowed their silly ancestors in twenty
years, who

to the theatre would come,
Ere they had dined, to take up the best room;
There sit on benches not adorned with mats,
And graciously did vail their high-crowned hats
To every half-dressed player, as he still
Through the hangings peeped to see how the house did fill.
Good easy judging souls! with what delight
They would expect a jig or target fight;
A furious tale of Troy, which they ne'er thought
Was weakly written so 'twere strongly fought.

As to the playgoers of the Restoration we have abundant information
from the poet Dryden, and the diarist Pepys. For some eighteen years
the theatres had been absolutely closed, and during that interval very
great changes had occurred. England, under Charles II., seemed as a
new and different country to the England of preceding monarchs. The
restored king and his courtiers brought with them from their exile in
France strange manners, and customs, and tastes. The theatre they
favoured was scarcely the theatre that had flourished in England
before the Civil War. Dryden reminds the spectators, in one of his
prologues--

You now have habits, dances, scenes, and rhymes,
High language often, ay, and sense sometimes.