The Regents Restoration Drama Series provides soundly edited

texts, in modern spelling, of the more significant plays of the late

seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. The word "Restoration"

is here used ambiguously and must be explained. If to the historian

it refers to the period between 1660 and 1685 (or 1688), it has long

been used by the student of drama in default of a more precise word

to refer to plays belonging to the dramatic tradition established in

the 1660 s, weakening after 1700, and displaced in the 1730 s. It is in

this extended sense--imprecise though justified by academic custom

--that the word is used in this series, which includes plays first

produced between 1660 and 1737. Although these limiting dates are

determined by political events, the return of Charles II (and the

removal of prohibitions against operation of theaters) and the passage

of Walpole s Stage Licensing Act, they enclose a period of dramatic

history having a coherence of its own in the establishment, develop-

ment, and disintegration of a tradition.