Plays by George Colman the Younger and Thomas Morton: Inkle and Yarico, The Surrender of Calais, The Children in the Wood, Blue Beard or Female Curiosity, Speed the Plough

This volume contains edited texts of five plays by two late eighteenth-century dramatists. The plays have been chosen to represent the range of the two playwrights and the variety of dramatic material on offer during the period. The full-length plays and afterpieces by George Colman the Younger and Thomas Morton were as popular as Sheridan's works in their time, but today are seldom performed or read. This discrepancy lies at the heart of Barry Sutcliffe's extensive introduction, which explores the critical and social background to the dramatic activity of the period and relates the dramas to the shifting demands of the theatre audiences for whom these plays were written.