Thomas Southerne's dark The Wives' Excuse (1691) is not yet very "soft": it shows a woman miserably married to the fop Friendall, everybody's friend, whose follies and indiscretions undermine her social worth, since her honour is bound up in his.
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They stole freely from the contemporary French and Spanish stage, from English Jacobean and Caroline plays, and even from Greek and Roman classical comedies, and combined the looted plotlines in adventurous ways.
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(Their role in the development of Restoration tragedy is also important, compare She-tragedy.)
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The classics, Wycherley's The Country Wife and The Plain-Dealer, Etherege's The Man of Mode, and Congreve's Love For Love and The Way of the World have competition not only from Vanbrugh's The Relapse and The Provoked Wife, but from such dark unfunny comedies as Thomas Southerne's The Wives Excuse.
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The second scene is a parody of a restoration comedy, and the third scene is a panorama of Victorian triumph based on a policeman directing the traffic in Hyde Park.
Three Hours After Marriage was a restoration comedy, written in 1717 as a collaboration between John Gay, Alexander Pope and John Arbuthnot.