Dryden’s audiences in 1671, both aristocratic and middle-class, wouldhave been quick to respond to the themes of disputed royal succession, Francophilia and loyalty among subjects in his most successfultragicomedy. In the tragic plot, written in verse, young Leonidas hasto struggle to assert his place as the rightful heir to the throne of Sicily and to the hand of the usurper’s daughter. In the comic plot, written in prose, two fashionable couples (much more at home in Londondrawing-rooms than at the Sicilian court) play at switching partners inthe ’modern’ style. The introduction of this edition argues that Dryden’s own ambivalence about King Charles and his entourage, on whomhe came to rely more on more for patronage, manifests itself in bothplots; most of all perhaps in the excessively Francophile Melantha, whose affectation cannot quite hide her endearing joie-de-vivre.
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