This book introduces students to the drama which followed the Restoration of Charles II in 1660. There is representative coverage of both the new forms in this period, and of ways in which the old forms altered, including heroic drama, comedy, tragedy, tragi-comedy and adaptations of Shakespeare . Sue Owen illuminates the plays by situating them in their theatrical, social and historical context and considers the effects of censorship and of the limiting of the number of theatres by royal decree. With emphasis on specific 'dramatic highlights' and giving close reading of particular plays, students will not only encounter familiar authors such as Dryden, Behn, Wycherley and Congreve, but also less familiar playwrights such as Otway and Lee. This was a contradictory period, which saw a moral crisis engendered by the libertinism of the king and court; the rise of the sentimental; a crisis of masculinity; and an ambivalent situation for women, as they manoeuvred for position within the contradictions of libertine discourse. Women were able for the first time to act and to write for the stage, but at the same time were often treated as morally compromised by their association with the theatre. There was also a political crisis, provoked by the absolutist tendencies and francophile and Catholic sympathies of the king and court. This hardened into an acute crisis and (for the first time in England) created party-political division in the late 1670s. The drama of the period was profoundly influenced by these developments.