Editing Stuart Restoration (section)

==Culture==
The Restoration and Charles' coronation mark a reversal of the stringent Puritan morality, "as though the pendulum [of England's morality] swung from repression to licence more or less overnight".{{sfn|Baker|1994|p=85}} Theatres reopened after having been closed during the protectorship, Puritanism lost its momentum, and bawdy comedy became a recognisable genre.  In addition, women were allowed to perform on the commercial stage as professional actresses for the first time. In Scotland, the bishops returned as the [[Episcopacy]] was reinstated.

To celebrate the occasion and cement their diplomatic relations, the Dutch Republic presented Charles with the [[Dutch Gift]], a fine collection of old master paintings, classical sculptures, furniture, and a yacht.

===Literature===
{{Main|Restoration literature}}
Restoration literature includes the roughly homogenous styles of literature that centre on a celebration of or reaction to the restored court of King Charles II. It is a literature that includes extremes, for it encompasses both ''[[Paradise Lost]]'' and the [[John Wilmot, 2nd Earl of Rochester]]'s ''[[Sodom, or the Quintessence of Debauchery|Sodom]]'', the high-spirited [[Sex comedy|sexual comedy]] of ''[[The Country Wife]]'' and the moral wisdom of ''[[The Pilgrim's Progress]]''. It saw [[John Locke|Locke]]'s ''[[Two Treatises of Government|Treatises of Government]]'', the founding of the [[Royal Society]], the experiments and holy meditations of [[Robert Boyle]], the hysterical attacks on theatres from [[Jeremy Collier]], and the pioneering of [[literary criticism]] from [[John Dryden]] and [[John Dennis (dramatist)|John Dennis]]. The period witnessed news become a commodity, the [[essay]] develop into a periodical art form, and the beginnings of [[textual criticism]].<ref>{{Cite book |last=Sutherland |first=James Runcieman |title=Restoration Literature, 1660–1700: Dryden, Bunyan, and Pepys |date=1969 |publisher=Clarendon Press}}</ref>

===Style===
{{Main|Restoration style}}
The return of the king and his court from exile led to the replacement of the Puritan severity of the Cromwellian style with a taste for magnificence and opulence and to the introduction of Dutch and French artistic influences. These are evident in furniture in the use of floral [[marquetry]], [[walnut]] instead of oak, twisted turned supports and legs, exotic [[Wood veneer|veneer]]s, cane seats and backs on chairs, sumptuous [[tapestry]] and [[velvet]] [[upholstery]] and ornate carved and gilded scrolling bases for cabinets.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Arakelin |first=Paul G. |date=1979 |title=The Myth of a Restoration Style Shift |journal=The Eighteenth Century |volume=20 |pages=227–245 |jstor=41467197}}</ref> Similar shifts appear in prose style.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Egan |first=James |date=1999 |title='For mine own private satisfaction': Marvell's aesthetic signatures in the rehearsal Transpros'd. |journal=Prose Studies |volume=22 |issue=3 |pages=17–40 |doi=10.1080/01440359908586683}}</ref>

===Comedy===
{{Main|Restoration comedy}}
Comedy, especially bawdy comedy, flourished, and a favourite setting was the bed-chamber.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Webster |first=Jeremy W. |date=2012 |title=In and Out of the Bed-chamber: Staging Libertine Desire in Restoration Comedy |journal=Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studie |pages=77–96}}</ref> Indeed, sexually explicit language was encouraged by the king personally and by the rakish style of his court. Historian [[George Norman Clark]] argues:

{{Blockquote|The best-known fact about the Restoration drama is that it is immoral. The dramatists did not criticize the accepted morality about gambling, drink, love, and pleasure generally, or try, like the dramatists of our own time, to work out their own view of character and conduct. What they did was, according to their respective inclinations, to mock at all restraints. Some were gross, others delicately improper....The dramatists did not merely say anything they liked: they also intended to glory in it and to shock those who did not like it.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Clark |first=George |author-link=George Norman Clark |title=The Later Stuarts, 1660–1714 |date=1956 |pages=369}}</ref>}}

The socially diverse audiences included both aristocrats, their servants and hangers-on, and a substantial middle-class segment.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Love |first=Harold |date=1986 |title=Who Were the Restoration Audience? |journal=The Yearbook of English Studies |volume=10 |pages=21–40}}</ref> These playgoers were attracted to the comedies by up-to-the-minute topical writing, by crowded and bustling plots, by the introduction of the first professional actresses, and by the rise of the first celebrity actors. This period saw the first professional female playwright, [[Aphra Behn]].<ref>{{Cite book |last=Dobrée |first=Bonamy |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ZhlaAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA9 |title=Restoration Comedy, 1660–1720 |date=1924 |publisher=Oxford University Press |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200818161818/https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=lang_en&id=ZhlaAAAAMAAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PA9&dq=%22Restoration+style%22+severity+england+puritanism&ots=7XVt96Cwd9&sig=4_EZpAi3tZTsT9Sh-iySC9T1nKE |archive-date=18 August 2020}}</ref>

===Spectacular===
{{Main|Restoration spectacular}}

[[Image:Settle-Morocco-detail.png|thumb|250px|This naval battle was one of the sets for [[Elkanah Settle]]'s ''Empress of Morocco'' (1673) at [[Dorset Garden Theatre|the theatre in Dorset Garden]].]]
The '''Restoration spectacular''', or elaborately staged '''machine play''', hit the London public stage in the late 17th-century Restoration period, enthralling audiences with action, music, dance, moveable scenery, [[baroque illusionistic painting]], gorgeous costumes, and special effects such as trapdoor tricks, "flying" actors, and fireworks. These shows have always had a bad reputation as a vulgar and commercial threat to the witty, "legitimate" Restoration drama; however, they drew Londoners in unprecedented numbers and left them dazzled and delighted.<ref>{{Cite thesis |last=Bakewell |first=Lyndsey |title=Changing scenes and flying machines: re-examination of spectacle and the spectacular in Restoration theatre, 1660–1714 |date=2016 |degree=PhD. Diss. Loughborough University |url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200212175057/https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/5c52/dfd2b876951f2d9ca982a2aa2460f52c228f.pdf}}</ref>

Basically home-grown and with roots in the early 17th-century court [[masque]], though never ashamed of borrowing ideas and stage technology from [[French opera]], the spectaculars are sometimes called "English opera". However, the variety of them is so untidy that most theatre historians despair of defining them as a genre at all.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Hume |first=Robert D. |title=The Development of English Drama in the Late Seventeenth Century |date=1976 |page=205}}</ref> Only a handful of works of this period are usually accorded the term "opera", as the musical dimension of most of them is subordinate to the visual. It was spectacle and scenery that drew in the crowds, as shown by many comments in the diary of the theatre-lover [[Samuel Pepys]].{{Sfn|Hume|1976|pages=206–209}}</ref>

The expense of mounting ever more elaborate scenic productions drove the two competing theatre companies into a dangerous spiral of huge expenditure and correspondingly huge losses or profits. A fiasco such as [[John Dryden]]'s ''[[Albion and Albanius]]'' would leave a company in serious debt, while blockbusters like [[Thomas Shadwell]]'s ''Psyche'' or Dryden's ''[[King Arthur (opera)|King Arthur]]'' would put it comfortably in the black for a long time.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Milhous |first=Judith |title=Thomas Betterton and the Management of Lincoln's Inn Fields 1695–1708 |date=1979 |publisher=Southern Illinois University Press |pages=47–48}}</ref>