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Late Shadwell and Early Bourgeois Comedy

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From: The Eighteenth Century
Date: 20050701
Author:Canfield, J Douglas

In the later twentieth century, Thomas Shadwell's reputation was restored by a generation of critics who realized that the quality of his comedies was often finer than those of his nemesis, John Dryden, who pilloried him in MacFlecknoe. Four of Shadwell's comedies of the 1670s must now be conside red among the finest of that halcyon decade: Epsom-Wells (1672), The Virtuoso (1676), A True Widow (1678), and The Woman-Captain (1679).1 Perhaps his most famous comedy, however, remains The Squire of Alsatia, which debuted just months before the Glorious Revolution (May 1688). Because of its ...

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