The Witty Fair One

The Witty Fair One is a Caroline era stage play, an early comedy by James Shirley. Critics have cited the play as indicative of the evolution of English comic drama from the humors comedy of Ben Jonson to the Restoration comedy of Wycherley and Congreve,[1] and the comedy of manners that followed.[2][3]

  1. ^ Terence P. Logan and Denzell S. Smith, eds., The Later Jacobean and Caroline Dramatists: A Survey and Bibliography of Recent Studies in English Renaissance Drama, Lincoln, NE, University of Nebraska Press, 1978; p. 153.
  2. ^ Allardyce Nicoll, Readings from British Drama, New York, Thomas Y. Crowell Co., 1929; p. 130.
  3. ^ Arthur Nason called it "a realistic comedy of manners and of humors;" Arthur Huntington Nason, James Shirley, Dramatist: A Biographical and Critical Study, New York, 1915; reprinted New York, Benjamin Blom, 1967; p. 184.