Values and imperfections of the English Restoration Plays

Abstract

Although writers of the English Restoration tragedy were not able to continue the path of the magnificent Renaissance tragedy and to become the worthy heirs of Shakespeare, they were experimenting with the verse and themes leaving a few impressive tragic scenes. Therefore, the heroic tragedy, as a dramatic kind, did not achieve an enviable aesthetic value. On the other hand, writers of comedies have managed to adjust the traditional elements to the new literary trends and to the atmosphere of the epoch. They have created a comedy of character and humor with an appropriate and realistic prose dialogue full of wit and refined language which was the best media for depicting cheerful and immoral aristocratic life of that time. Preserving and highlighting these dramatic elements, the dramatists of the Restoration have influenced the successors of a typical British comedy that will come to life again, in its true and pure comic form, in the works of Bernard Shaw and Oscar Wilde.