in 
Literature 
and Art. 
395 
is put in an equally extraordinary manner, by the entrance of the furious 
hero Drawcanfir, who {lays all the combatants on both fides. The 
marriage of prince Prettyman was to form the fubjeot of the fifth ail, but 
while Bayes, Johnfon, and Smith withdraw temporarily, all theyplayers, in 
difguit, run away to their dinners, and thus ends " The Rehearfal" of 
Mr. Bayes's play. The epilogue returns to the moral which the play was 
defigned to inculcate  
Tire play is at an end, bu: where": tlze plat ? 
Tlmt circumpance tlze poet Bayes _f?n-got. 
And -we can bvaji, though 'tis a plotting age, 
Na place is freer from it tlmn rlxejlage. 
Formerly people fought to write fo that they might be 
" this new way of wit " was altogether incompreheniible : 
underiiood, but 
VVl1erefZire,fbr ours, andfbr tlze kingdom": peace, 
Maj tlzis prodigious -way qf -writing teafe ; 
Let": lza-ue, at leaf? once in our li've:, a time 
When we may lzearjume reqfon, not all rhyme. 
We have this ten yearsjelt its irgfluenee; 
Pray let zlzi: prove ayear gfprqfe and 1245. 
Englilh comedy was certainly greatly reformed, in fome fenfes of the 
word reform, during the period which followed the publication of " The 
Rehearfal," and, in the hands of writers like Wycherley, Shadwell, 
Congreve, a11d D'Urfey, the dulnefs of the Howards was exchanged 
for an extreme degree of vivacity. The plot was as little confidered as 
ever--it was a mere peg on which to hang fcenes brilliant with wit and 
repartee. The fmall intrigue is often but a frame for a great picture of 
fociety in its forms then molt open to caricature, with all the petty 
intrigues infeparable from it. " Epfom Wells," one of Shadwe11's earlier 
comedies, and perhaps his belt, will bear comparifon with Jonfon's 
" Bartholomew Fair." The perfonages reprefented in it are exa6tly"thof'e 
which then {hone in fuch fociety-three  men of wit and pleafure," one 
of the clafs of country (quires whom the wits of London loved to laugh at, 
and who is defcribed as "a country juflice, a public fpirited, politick, 
difcontented