11. The Restoration and Public Pleasures.

Restoration

In 1660 the English Parliament that had ordered the execution of Charles I invited his son Charles II to return from exile and reclaim the throne. With the restoration of the monarchy, many old entertainments were restored. The theaters were reopened, public festivals were celebrated, and new fashions in clothes, food, and ideas flooded in from the European continent. Intellectual life began to flourish once more and set the stage for the burgeoning Enlightenment that took hold in England during the following century. Charles was a far cry from both his father and Oliver Cromwell. Known as the merry monarch, the good natured Charles enjoyed pleasures of all kinds, from courtly entertainments to his royal mistresses. Trying to break the cycle of retribution which had plagued England for so long, Charles forgave many of his father’s old enemies. His mercy did not extend, however, to most of the judges at his father’s trial and signers of the order of execution. Cromwell’s body, which had been buried in the Tower of London, was dug up, beheaded, and reburied in a common pit.

Public Pleasures

Charles II’s taste for pleasure was shared by many people, whose lives had been dreary under Puritan rule. Holidays such as Christmas were celebrated once more, horse races—and betting—started up again, and music and evening masquerade parties filled public pleasure gardens such as Vauxhall. Charles also reopened the theaters. Audiences had an insatiable appetite for comedies about the fashionable manners of the age. Bawdy, witty, and amoral, these Restoration dramas by such playwrights as William Congreve, William Wycherley, and George Farquhar reflect a cynical frivolity in matters of love and money. The plays seemed all the more scandalous because the new theaters allowed women to appear on the stage for the first time. One of the most popular playwrights of the day was Aphra Behn, the first woman in England to make her living as a professional writer. Behn was often accused of lewdness (bujaság), but there is no doubt that her vivacious comedies reflected the pleasure-loving attitude and carpe diem spirit of the Restoration.

Coffee and Tee

Drinking tea became popular in England during the Restoration. At that time, it was a very costly drink: a pound of tea cost 10 pounds. By 1700 the price was reduced to one pound, but this was still a big expense for ordinary British families, whose annual income ranged between 15 and 50 pounds a year. The first coffeehouse opened in London in 1652. By 1663 London had 82 coffeehouses; by 1700 the number had grown to somewhere between 500 and 2000.

12. The Enlightenment and Neoclassicism

The Enlightenment was a European philosophical and literary movement that in England is often called “The Age of Reason.” It is characterized by a profound faith in the power of human reason and a devotion to clarity of thought. With the Restoration came a return to Anglicanism as England's state religion and a realization that future monarchs would have to share their authority with Parliament, whose influence had increased substantially. A related literary movement was Neoclassicism, which reached its pinnacle in the poetry, prose, and criticism of Samuel Johnson. Its major tenet was the conviction that the classical authors of ancient Greece and Rome had perfected the rules and norms that should govern the writing of literature for all time.