Restoration Theater

When Charles II reopened the theaters in 1660, he unleashed a cultural revolution — bawdy, political, and featuring women on stage for the first time in English history.

The Puritan closure

In 1642, Parliament — dominated by Puritans — ordered all theaters in England closed. For eighteen years, no legal public performances took place. The playhouses were shuttered, actors dispersed, and an entire theatrical tradition that had produced Shakespeare, Marlowe, and Jonson within living memory was suppressed. Drama was seen as morally corrupting, a waste of time, and an occasion for public disorder.

The reopening

With the Restoration in 1660, Charles II immediately licensed two theater companies: the King’s Company and the Duke’s Company. The new king, raised at the French court, loved theater and wanted it back. But Restoration theater was fundamentally different from what came before. For the first time, women played female roles (previously performed by boys). The stages used elaborate movable scenery. And the plays themselves reflected the new era’s cynicism about sex, money, and power.

The plays

Restoration comedy is famous for its sexual frankness. Plays like Wycherley’s The Country Wife, Etherege’s The Man of Mode, and Congreve’s The Way of the World depict aristocrats scheming, seducing, and deceiving each other in witty dialogue. The humor is often obscene by modern standards — puns on “dying” (orgasm), “coming,” and “spending” are constant. The genre reflected a court culture that prized wit above morality, in deliberate contrast to Puritan austerity.

”Once More Into the Breeches”

“Breeches roles” — parts in which actresses wore men’s clothing on stage — were wildly popular in Restoration theater. The title on page 236, “Once More Into the Breeches,” is a pun on Shakespeare’s “Once more unto the breach” (Henry V) and on this theatrical convention. Stephenson notes that readers who enjoy this sort of thing can find much more under the rubric of Restoration plays.

In the novel

Restoration theater serves as background color for the London sections of the novel, reflecting the cultural whiplash between Puritan repression and Restoration excess. Daniel, raised a Puritan, moves through this newly hedonistic world with discomfort — much as he navigates between the austere rigor of Newton and the worldly sociability of the Royal Society.