Vanbrugh and Farquhar

The plays of Vanbrugh and Farquhar effectively herald the end of the great period of post-Restoration comedy. Both writers, in their very different ways, reflect the larger changes that British society was undergoing as it began to define a modern world. The renewed interest in their work, and the frequent revivals of it on stage, comes not just from an admiration of their reinvigoration of the comic mode, but from their clear articulation of the sense of an old world in conflict with a new. In …