's comedy, _An
Evening's Love_, was adapted from Thomas Corneille's _Le Feint
Astrologue_, and his _Sir Martin Mar-all_, from Moliere's _L'Etourdi_.
Shadwell borrowed his _Miser_ from Moliere, and Otway made versions of
Racine's _Berenice_ and Moliere's _Fourberies de Scapin_. Wycherley's
_Country Wife_ and _Plain Dealer_ although not translations, were based,
in a sense, upon Moliere's _Ecole des Femmes_ and _Le Misanthrope_. The
only one of the tragic dramatists of the Restoration who prolonged the
traditions of the Elizabethan stage was Otway, whose _Venice Preserved_,
written in blank verse, still keeps the boards. There are fine passages
in Dryden's heroic plays, passages weighty in thought and nobly sonorous
in language. There is one great scene (between Antony and Ventidius) in
his _All for Love_. And one, at least, of his comedies, the _Spanish_
_Friar_, is skillfully constructed. But his nature was not pliable
enough for the drama, and he acknowledged that, in writing for the
stage, he "forced his genius."

In sharp contrast with these heroic plays was the comic drama of the
Restoration, the plays of Wycherley, Killigrew, Etherege, Farquhar, Van
Brugh, Congreve, and others; plays like the _Country Wife_, the
_Parson's Wedding, She Would if She Could_, the _Beaux' Stratagem,_ the
_Relapse_, and the _Way of the World_. These were in prose, and
represented the gay world and the surface of fashionable life. Amorous
intrigue was their constantly recurring theme. Some of them were written
expressly in ridicule of the Puritans. Such was the _Committee_ of
Dryden's brother-in-law, Sir Robert Howard, the hero of which is a
distressed gentleman, and the villain a London cit, and president of the
committee appointed by Parliament to sit upon the sequestration of the
estates of royalists. Such were also the _Roundheads_ and the _Banished
Cavaliers_ of Mrs. Aphra Behn, who was a female spy in the service of
Charles II., at Antwerp, and one of the coarsest of the Restoration
comedians. The profession of piety had become so disagreeable that a
shameless cynicism was now considered the mark of a gentleman. The ideal
hero of Wycherley or Etherege was the witty young profligate, who had
seen life, and learned to disbelieve in virtue. His highest qualities
were a contempt for cant, physical courage, a sort of spendthrift
generosity, and a good-natured readiness to back up a friend in a
quarrel, or an amour. Virtue was _bourgeois_