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1684 in literature

Thomas Southerne - The Disappointment, or the Mother of Fashion

1691 in literature

Thomas Southerne – The Wives' Excuse, or Cuckolds Make Themselves

1693 in literature

Thomas Southerne – The Maid's Last Prayer, or Any Rather Than Fail

Restoration comedy

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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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.

Richardson Pack

Pack's prologue to Sewell's Tragedy of Sir Walter Raleigh, and his epilogue to Thomas Southerne's Spartan Dame, were admired.

Thomas Southerne

It was frequently revived, and in 1757 was altered by David Garrick and produced at Drury Lane.

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His other plays are: The Disappointment, or the Mother in Fashion (1684), founded in part on the Curioso Imperlinente in Don Quixote; The Wives Excuse, or Cuckolds make themselves (1692); The Maids Last Prayer; or Any rather than fail (1692); The Fate of Capua (1700); The Spartan Dame (1719), taken from Plutarch's Life of Aegis; and Money the Mistress (1729).

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Tachmas, the loyal brother, is obviously a flattering portrait of James II, and the villain Ismael is generally taken to represent Shaftesbury.

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In 1692 he revised and completed Cleomenes for John Dryden; and two years later he scored a great success in the sentimental drama of The Fatal Marriage, or the Innocent Adultery (1694).