Nor do we know how much more music may have been written for
the first plays, nor how much of what has been preserved is genuine
Purcell.
On one point we may be quite certain. It is the greatest pity that
Purcell wasted so much time on these Restoration shows. When the English
people revolted against Puritanism, and gave the incorrigible Stuarts
another chance, Charles the Wanderer returned to find them in a May-Day
humour. They thrust away from them for a little while the ghastly
spiritual hypochondria of which Puritanism was a manifestation, and
determined to make merry. But, heigh-ho! the day of Maypoles was over
and gone. From the beginning the jollity and laughter were forced, and
the new era of perpetual spring festival soon became an era of brainless
indecency. Even the wit of the Restoration was bitter, acid, sardonic
(as Charles's own death-bed apology for being an unconscionable time
a-dying). Generally it was ill-tempered, and employed to inflict pain.
And there was not even wit in most of the plays. It is hard to see what
even the worst age could discover to laugh at in Shadwell's _Libertine_,
the story of Don Juan told in English, and, in a sense, made the most
of.
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