Thomas Otway

Abstract

The crises that exiled Etherege had divorced the comedy he established from its social basis. The professional dramatists took over a form with which the court wits no longer concerned themselves. The social ethos to which it had given expression was not of immediate interest to a town taken up by the factional politics of the Exclusion crisis. The Whigs attempt to exclude James, Charles’ catholic brother, from accession to the throne, brought into direct question the always equivocal nature of the monarch’s relationship to his parliament, a relationship to be suspended by Charles’ decision to rule without parliament, but then restored after his death by James’ expulsion and the constitutional settlement with William and Mary. The mood of the interim period could scarcely be contained by the ironies of modish comedy. The contradictory position of the professional writers allows them access to a darker more disabused view of events.