The Catalogue

The Restoration Comedy Project aims to provide an online database on all the comedies, farces, burlesques and drolls, as well as some tragicomedies in which comedy has a significant part, written in the Restoration period. The database offers a plot summary of each play, as well as full details on author, title, subtitle, date of performance, cast, and descriptions of prologue, epilogue, stage directions, and allusions to contemporary events.

Work on the database is still in progress. Currently it includes information on all comedies produced from 1660 to 1682. As work on those produced after 1683 advances, they will be added to the database.

To consult the online database, click on the Restoration Comedy Project icon below:

The Restoration Comedy Project has agreed with Teneo Press to provide the catalogue in four printed volumes. The first two have already been published: volume 1 (2014) contains all comedies produced between 1660 and 1670; volume 2 (2019), on those from 16671 to 1682.

Each volume contains a file for each of the plays. It also includes a general introduction, which advances conclusions based on a quantitative analysis of the data collected; and a set of appendixes that enable a quick search of specific data by type.

These volumes will enable readers to follow the development of comedy, from tentative adaptations of old plays to the new models introduced at the end of the decade. It also reveals the relationship between Restoration actors and the parts especially written for them, particularly the growing importance of female roles now that women were able to take to the stage; the system of patronage; the way prologues and epilogues adapted to the changing nature of audiences and commented on contemporary events and fashions; the growing complexity of stagecraft, and the increasing relevance of music, song, and dance in the drama.