Originally published in 1970, this title starts with an introduction, in which Professor Muir distinguishes between the Comedy of Manners and other types of comedy and traces its origins in English and French literature, there are then chapters on the major writers - Etherege, Dryden, Wycherly, Congreve, Vanbrugh, Farquhar - and on Jeremy Collier's attack on the immorality and profaneness of the plays. This is followed by a discussion of the reasons...