So Dryden ran before the wind.
About three years after the Restoration Dryden married an earl's
daughter, Lady Elizabeth Howard. We know very little about their
life together, but they had three children of whom they were very
fond.
With the Restoration came the re-opening of the theaters, and for
fourteen years Dryden was known as a dramatic poet. There is
little need to tell you anything about his plays, for you would
not like to read them. During the reign of Puritanism in England
the people had been forbidden even innocent pleasures. The
Maypole dances had been banished, games and laughter were frowned
upon. Now that these too stern laws had been taken away, people
plunged madly into pleasure: laughter became coarse, merriment
became riotous. Puritan England had lost the sense of where
innocent pleasure ends and wickedness begins. In another way
Restoration England did the same. The people of the Restoration
saw fun and laughter in plays which seem to us now simply vulgar
and coarse as well as dull.
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