![Elkanah Settle, The New Athenian Comedy, containing the politicks, oeconomicks, tacticks, crypticks, apocalypticks,’s typ ticks, seep ticks, pneumaticks, theologicks, poeticks, mathematicks, sophisticks, pragmaticks, dogmaticks, &c. of that most learned society (London, printed for Campanella Restio, next door to the Apollo, near the Temple, 1693), [8], 28pp.; 4°. BL: 644.e.61. ESTCR9900](https://images.tandf.co.uk/common/jackets/crclarge/978131509/9781315094625.jpg "Elkanah Settle, The New Athenian Comedy, containing the politicks, oeconomicks, tacticks, crypticks, apocalypticks,’s typ ticks, seep ticks, pneumaticks, theologicks, poeticks, mathematicks, sophisticks, pragmaticks, dogmaticks, &c. of that most learned society (London, printed for Campanella Restio, next door to the Apollo, near the Temple, 1693), [8], 28pp.; 4°. BL: 644.e.61. ESTCR9900")
ABSTRACT
A comedy in three acts and prose satirising the intellectual culture associated with the coffee-houses in the 1690s, The New Athenian Comedy targets the Athenian Society led by John Dunton. The play does not appear to have been staged. Luttrells copy at the Huntington Library bears the date 6 July 1693 (London Stage, part I, p. 413). Elkanah Settle (1648–1724) was aprolific playwright and satirist, educated at Westminster School and Oxford. Having completed his first play, he left Oxford without taking a degree, and settled in London where he wrote a series of popular and successful tragedies, including The Empress of Morocco (1673). This success riled his contemporaries, including Dryden and Shadwell, and Settle’s work attracted a barrage of largely hostile criticism that has determined his later literary reputation. Settle was also a prolific propagandist for the Whig cause in the Exclusion crisis, and subsequently, after the exile of Shaftesbury, for the Tory party. After the revolution of 1688, he changed sides once more, and became an enthusiastic Williamite. In the 1690s, he dedicated himself to drama again, writing a series of major tragedies: Distress’d Innocence (1691), The Fairy Queen (1692), with music by Purcell, and a tragicomedy, Philaster, or Loves Lies Bleeding (1695). In 1691, he was appointed to the role of City Poet, in charge of the lavish annual city pageants for the Lord Mayor’s Show, a role he held until c. 1708. In 1718 Settle entered the Charterhouse, where he died in 1724.
