1660 to 1710 in the Restoration Theater

English theaters

English theaters were kept closed by the Puritans for ideological and theological reasons during the Interregnum (1642–1660). Following the Restoration of the monarchy in 1660, the London theaters prospered with Charles II's personal involvement and patronage (reigned 1660–1685). Topical content and the debut of the first professional actresses (all female roles had previously been performed by males) drew in large and socially diverse audiences. The heroic drama, tragic drama, and Restoration comedy were new genres during the Restoration. The Restoration comedies, like William Wycherley's (1676) The Country Wife, have done the best job of retaining audiences and producers' interest today.

Even though Irish theatre has a recorded history that dates back at least to 1601, the first notable Irish dramatists were William Congreve (1670–1729), the author of (1700), and late Restoration playwright The Way of the World.From the United Kingdom, theater started to spread to the growing British Empire. On December 6, 1732, Farquhar's The Recruiting Officer was performed as the city's first play. It was also the first play to be presented in the [11]In 1737, Allan Ramsay brought theater back to Scotland.The censorship instituted by the Licensing Act 1737 put an end to the Augustan drama era. Novels started to have dramatic structures involving only everyday people after 1737, when authors with strong political or philosophical points to make stopped looking to the stage as their first option for a living. This was because the stage was no longer open to authors with serious ideas, and because it was no longer a viable source of income for authors. Theater was the main choice for the majority of wits before the Licensing Act 1737. The novel came after that.

18th-century

In the 18th century, sentimental comedy, domestic Bourgeois tragedies like George Lillo's The London Merchant (1731), and an overwhelming interest in Italian opera took the place of the highbrow and controversial Restoration comedy. With fair-booth burlesque and mixed forms, which are the forerunners of the English music hall, popular entertainment assumed greater significance at this time than it had ever done before. These genres thrived at the expense of authentic English drama, which saw a protracted decline. Early in the 19th century, it was mostly represented by "closet theater," or plays meant to be read in privacy in a "closet," rather than any theatrical plays (a small domestic room).

Romanticism: 1798 to 1836

The most significant literary dramatists of their era were Percy Bysshe Shelley and Lord Byron, even though Shelley's plays weren't staged until much later in the century. As the drastic rewriting of Shakespeare's plays for the stage in the 17th and 18th centuries (as opposed to his plays in book form, which were also widely read) was gradually removed over the course of the first half of the century, his plays became increasingly popular and started to be performed with texts that were closer to the original.Along with Victorian burlesque, melodramas, light comedies, operas, Shakespearean and classic English theater, pantomimes, adaptations of French farces, and French operettas began to gain popularity in the 1860s.