George Villiers, Second Duke of Buckingham (1628-1687) was one of the most scandalous and controversial figures of the Restoration period. He was the principal author of The Rehearsal (1671), an enormously successful burlesque play that ridiculed John Dryden and the rhymed heroic drama. Historians remember Buckingham as an opponent who helped topple Clarendon from power in 1667, as a member of the "Cabal" government in the early 1670s, and as an ally of the Earl of Shaftesbury in the political crisis of 1678-1683. The duke was prominent among the "court wits" (Rochester, Etherege, Sedley,...

In the first comprehensive survey of this vast field, Harold Love considers the relationship of the lampoon to gossip, how one might construct a poetics of the genre, and how clandestine satire reached and was received by its readers. Constructing three primary categories of "court," "Town" and "state" lampooning, Love argues that far from being the product of isolated disaffection, most satire was the work of a circle of recognized poets, frequently operating in collaboration. An extensive first-line index to the principal manuscript sources for clandestine satire makes this book an open...

John Wilmot, second Earl of Rochester (1647-80), was a leading member of the group of "court wits" surrounding Charles II and one of the wittiest and most sexually explicit poets in English. In this long-awaited edition, Harold Love, a leading scholar of seventeenth-century manuscript circulation, presents a scholarly text based on detailed examination of Wilmot's manuscripts, with full textual and explanatory notes.