English society. The low standard of morals, and the general profligacy in manners, especially among the higher classes, are in part attributable to the demoralizing example of a shockingly licentious and shameless court; but in a larger measure, perhaps, should be viewed as the natural reaction from the over-stern, repellent Puritanism of the preceding period. The Puritans undoubtedly erred in their indiscriminate and wholesale denunciation of all forms of harmless amusement and innocent pleasure. They not only rebuked gaming, drinking, and profanity, and stopped bear-baiting, but they closed all the theatres, forbade the Maypole dances of the people, condemned as paganish the observance of Christmas, frowned upon sculpture as idolatrous and indecent, and considered any bright color in dress as utterly incompatible with a proper sense of the seriousness of life.
Now all this was laying too heavy a burden upon human nature. The revolt and reaction came, as come they must. Upon the Restoration, society swung to the opposite extreme. In place of the solemn-visaged, psalm-singing Roundhead, we have the gay, roistering Cavalier. Faith gives place to infidelity, sobriety to drunkenness, purity to profligacy, economy to extravagance, Biblestudy, psalm-singing and exhorting to theatre-going, profanity, and carousing.
The literature of the age is a perfect record of this revolt against the " sour severity " of Puritanism, and a faithful reflection of the unblushing immorality of the times.
The book most read and praised by Charles II. and his court, and the one that best represents the spirit of the victorious party, is the satirical poem of Hudibras by Samuel Butler. The object of the work is to satirize the cant and excesses of Puritanism, just as the Don Quixote of Cervantes burlesques the extravagances and follies of Chivalry.
So immoral and indecent are the works of the writers for the stage of this period that they have acquired the designation of "the corrupt dramatists." Among the authors of this species of literature was the poet Dryden.
