ABSTRACT
The difficulty that Bulstrode experienced in accurately describing a single instance of Killigrew's humour is replicated when modern critics attempt to categorize his comedy. It demonstrates that it is only by regarding Thomaso as a self-consciously constructed two-part comedy, and one that was staged and read as such by Killigrew and his contemporaries, that we can fully appreciate its place in the canon of seventeenth-century drama. The chapter also demonstrates, it also fails to engage with Killigrew's own developing sense of the plays as two-part comedy. They have already seen evidence of Killigrew's repetition compulsion in II Thomaso's knowing duplication of scenes and tropes from Part I, but his revisions to the folio text of both plays also demonstrate his serious efforts to present them as related yet self-contained dramas.
