The depravity of the taste of the patrons of the theatres had its influence upon the writers of the plays. Men whose personal lives were unexceptionable did not scruple, when writing pieces intended for representation upon the stage, to introduce as much indecency as they possibly could, knowing full well that unless their works were highly seasoned they would never get a hearing. The manners and tastes of the court of Charles II. established the standard of the theatres during his reign; the depravity of public sentiment and the general corruption of the times were greatly increased by these mirrors of the manners and life of the court. So utterly foul became the repute of the stage, that, to quote from Sydney's _Social Life in England_, "Every person who had the slightest regard for sobriety and morality avoided a playhouse as he would have avoided a house on the door of which the red cross bore witness to the awful fact that the inmates had been smitten by the pestilence which walketh in darkness and by the sickness that destroyeth in noon-day. The indecorous character of the stage inflicted much less injury than it would have done had it been covered with a thin veil of sentiment. Those dramatic representations, at which women desirous of maintaining some reputation for modesty deemed it incumbent upon them to wear masks, were, as may be supposed, studiously avoided by those who really were virtuous." The influence of the metropolis did not extend over the kingdom as it does to-day, so that outside of the tainted circles there were to be found social spheres where the old gentility of the Elizabethan age was maintained, although subjected to such sneers as were directed against them by Dryden, who looked upon them as unfortunate enough to have been bred in an unpolished age, and still more unlucky to live in a refined one. "They have lasted beyond their own, and are cast behind ours."
Artificiality without any pretence to sincerity was the spirit of the times of Charles II.; the maundering sentiments and flagitious bearing of the actors upon the stage were not different from the conduct of the buffoons who masqueraded in titles and elegant attire at the court of the king of revels. Foppery in speech and in dress and the interlarding of conversation with French phrases found favor among the court followers. It was regarded "as ill breeding to speak good English, as to write good English, good sense, or a good hand."