worse from the first years of James; that instead of the arts
advancing to perfection under Charles the First, they steadily
deteriorated in quality, though the supply became more abundant; that
so far from there having been a sudden change for the worse in the
drama after the Restoration, the taste of the courts of Charles the
First and of Charles the Second are indistinguishable; that the court
poets, and probably the actors also, of the early part of Charles the
Second's reign had many of them belonged to the court of Charles the
First, as did Davenant, the Duke and Duchess of Newcastle, Fanshaw,
and Shirley himself; that the common notion of a 'new manner' having
been introduced from France after the Restoration, or indeed having
come in at all, is not founded on fact, the only change being that
the plays of Charles the Second's time were somewhat more stupid, and
that while five of the seven deadly sins had always had free licence
on the stage, blasphemy and profane swearing were now enfranchised to
fill up the seven. As for the assertion that the new manner
(supposing it to have existed) was imported from France, there is far
more reason to believe that the French copied us than we them, and
that if they did not learn from Charles the First's poets the
superstition of 'the three unities,' they at least learnt to make
ancient kings and heroes talk and act like seventeenth century
courtiers, and to exchange their old clumsy masques and translations
of Italian and Spanish farces for a comedy depicting native
scoundrelism. Probably enough, indeed, the great and sudden
development of the French stage, which took place in the middle of
the seventeenth century under Corneille and Moliere, was excited by
the English cavalier playwrights who took refuge in France.

No doubt, as Mr. Gifford says, the Puritans were exasperated against
the stage-players by the insults heaped on them; but the cause of