ABSTRACT
Between the closing of the theaters in 1642 and the performance of Etherege’s first comedy in 1664, the dramatic critic, however sedulous his investigation, finds little progress to record in any form of English drama. The precieuse impulse, which had directed court tastes in the reign of Charles I, denied a favorable expression in dramatic literature, was diffused through other channels. Yet even before 1664 the dominance of the precieuse mode was already pledged in both heroic drama and comedy. Only by examining this obscure historical background can we perceive what The Comical Revenge really signified to Etherege’s contemporaries. Cowley was an extremely popular poet in the seventeenth century, and his influence counts for a good deal in the continuance of the precieuse tradition. Robert Loveday, translator of several parts of La Calprenede’s Cleopatre, issued in 1659 a volume of Letters, Domestick and Forrein.
