ABSTRACT
It is notable that in a period when aristocratic playwrights excelled, writers of fictitious narrative at the same social level were practically non-existent or lacking in merit. The only English writer of prose fiction to achieve permanent distinction as such in this period was the “mechanick” preacher John Bunyan; and for his work the court circles, so influential in the drama, had naturally no regard. Courtly fiction of the moment was imported, and came largely from France, the home of the elegant refinement that was then so highly regarded. One must not assume that fiction was rigidly specialized for class consumption; but clearly there were types of fiction devised for aristocratic, for pious, or for popular lower-class readers. But an aristocrat might be pious, and probably all classes, and not merely the less learned, read chapbooks on occasion. There is a specialization; but it cannot be rigidly asserted.1
