The Works Of Arthur Murphy Esq The Way To Keep Him All In The Wrong The Desert Island

Originally compiled and published in 1979, this volume contains six plays of Arthur Murphy: The Apprentice; The Upholsterer; The Old Maid; The Citizen; No One's Enemy but His Own; Three Weeks After Marriage.

For this volume George Taylor has edited five plays by two largely forgotten eighteenth-century playwrights, Samuel Foote and Arthur Murphy. The plays are The Minor and The Nabob by Foote and The Citizen, Three Weeks after Marriage and Know Your Own Mind by Murphy. All, apart from the last, are two- or three-act farces, the main popular fare of the eighteenth-century theatre. They are still eminently playable today, each exploring a different aspect of London society. Both playwrights have an acute ear for amusing and socially revealing dialogue, with a deft sense of situation comedy. Foote was an important theatre manager who established the success of the Haymarket Theatre by his particular brand of satire and mimicry. Had Murphy been more assiduous in his theatrical career and maintained good relations with David Garrick, his reputation as a dramatist might now have ranked him alongside Goldsmith and Sheridan.

What were the causes of Restoration drama's licentiousness? How did the elegantly-turned comedy of Congreve become the pointed satire of Fielding? And how did Sheridan and Goldsmith reshape the materials they inherited? In the first account of the entire period for more than a decade, Richard Bevis argues that none of these questions can be answered without an understanding of Augustan and Georgian history. The years between 1660 and 1789 saw considerable political and social upheaval, which is reflected in the eclectic array of dramatic forms that is Georgian theatre's essential characteristic.