"The critical protest against "fustian, bombast, and moral hypocrisy' staged in the eighteenth century by certain irregular, satirical kinds of comedy is well represented in this collection of ten burlesque plays of the period. The Duke of Buckingham's The Rehearsal (1671), with its ridicule of the rhymed heroic tragedy then dominating the theatre, established a tradition to which some of the most gifted writers contributed. 'Regular' comedy was soon...