Excerpt from The Sources of Tho; Shadwell's Comedy "Bury Fair" Thomas Shadwell lived in an age where Dramatic Lite rature was in a state of decline and consisted mainly of more or less licentious comedies of manner and of terror-exciting tragedies. They were the product of their time, reflecting its customs und ideas and exposing vice to the public without disguise and also without shocking either reader or Spectator. The comedies were besides commonly used as a sharp weapon for controversy and party politics. There is but little originality in the plays, Spanish and especially French influence being strongly marked in most of them. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.