ABSTRACT
The dramatic career of John Crowne extended over a period of about thirty years,—the last three decades of the seventeenth century. During that time he wrote eighteen plays and had a hand in the translation of another. Of these the greater number—ten in all—are tragedies, six are comedies, one is a tragi-comedy, and one is called a masque. The success of Crowne's two-part play was very remarkable, and is somewhat puzzling when one considers of what stuff and in what manner it was made. Crowne's couplets seldom rise above the level of that mediocrity which they achieved in his earlier rimed play Charles VIII. The plot of Crowne's Shakespearean adaptation does not vary in its essential features from the first four acts of 2 Henry VI. Crowne's play had its origin in the religious turmoil of the time, just as his City Politiques was a result of the political strife of the Popish Plot period.
